Not to mention a Necromancer leaving a light field is the weirdest crap ever.
Because burning really needs to be stronger, right?
They have hit MM multiple times, both buffs and nerfs, so no saying they only balance for competitive is completely false, since MM has never been played in a remotely competitive game.
Actually… Turret builds don’t have swiftness. XD
Technically they get swiftness from Net Turret and Experimental Turrets. I don’t think many people use net turret, but supply crate drops one. So you can get like 10s of swiftness on a 250s CD.
There are 5 separate turret engi threads on the first page alone.
As much as I enjoyed the old GW1 MM, the GW2 Necro minions don’t fit it at all. There is really nothing we could or should translate as far as mechanics, because it is an entirely different playstyle. Now, that isn’t to say that ANet couldn’t try to support it in the future, but it would require entirely new minion skills to do so, along with new minion traits, and in the end we’d basically end up with mobile turrets. But you’re looking at GW1 too much. GW2 needs to be balanced for its own style of play, which is very distinctly different than GW1, and shouldn’t be held back by GW1’s mechanics. Conditions/boons are vastly different than GW1, minions and necros are both very different than GW1, and PvP is very different than GW1. That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from GW1, but minion defense is definitely not one of those things.
Condi builds wouldn’t be countered by our idea for MM at all, they just wouldn’t be able to AoE spam the minions down with AoE condis (and would never use single target on a minion anyway). You shouldn’t have to kill the minions to counter the build, and with the other changes we are making you wouldn’t have to. You would kite the minions, because if you can simply kite Flesh Golem alone the minion DPS is around 600 which is less than burning, and you would focus all of your condi pressure on the MM because MMs can’t afford to take that much condi clear. All that you would have to do is watch the minions for their actives, other than that you wouldn’t need to actually worry about them.
Could they win a tournament? Yes. Will they win a major international tournament? No.
I’m pretty sure power necro has won in NA before. But NA historically has inferior teamwork, so that is no surprise. The only significant niche that power necro brings is Lich form, which is easy to counter if you focus on it. Without lich power necro is just a really easy to focus power build that requires too much protection to run. You could bring other power builds that do the same thing (minus lich) but safer.
They could both use the defensive changes. Spirits need better designed actives, and SW need an elite and a traiting overhaul.
At some point the forum-community-manager-people-thing will be up and running and it could get to them.
Well of Blood used to be the strongest healing scaling heal in the game by far, for both single target and AoE. It had 5.4 healing power scaling, 4.4 of which was AoE. That is absolutely ludicrously good healing, if you had 1k healing you increased the power of the heal by 5.4k to yourself alone. If you were healing 5 people it had 23.0 healing power scaling, so your 1k healing power was turned into 23k healing. This was on top of a 10s field, and base 5240 self healing instantly with 1672 healing per person in the field over time.
Meaning if you really tried to max out your healing power (which is around 1400 in PvP) you would heal for:
Yourself:
Base – 5240 + 1672 over 10 seconds = 6912 healing
Scaling = 1400*(1.0 + 4.4 over 10 seconds) = 7560 healing
Total = 14472
Allies:
Base – 1672 * 4 = 6688 healing
Scaling = 1400*(4.4 ratio)*4 = 24640 healing
Total = 31328 healing
Total overall = 45800 healing, with a 40s CD you’re looking at 1145 healing per second, 1431 if traited
That is a lot of healing. Obviously it is only in ideal conditions, but that is so much healing that you really couldn’t argue that it needed a 10 second water field on top of it.
Siphoning is accurately rated. It is rated as garbage because it is in fact garbage. Vampiric Master is generally regarded as the best siphoning trait and it gives a whopping 150HP per second and 200 DPS in ideal situations.
Another fail I presume, will top PvP player come back for this ? not a chance.
No, but will 11+ new skills per class, reworked traits, and a brand new profession? Most likely. Whether they stay around for long is a question of how well ANet follows up on balancing, but for a while the game should be pretty active, it is a ton of changes and is sure to mess with the meta.
Well, if no one was using it that is a reason for change. In their minds they were going to make it more usable by pushing its healing into a much smaller period of time. They would have been totally correct, only as a result they completely kittened up the ratio.
Edit: just checked to be sure. They basically took the base healing and smushed it into 5 seconds instead of 10. It used to be 1672 over 10 seconds, it is now 1680 over 5, so that part was fine, and makes sense: faster healing = stronger skill. The problem was they didn’t change the ratio at all, which means they took away 5 pulses-worth of the ratio, effectively nerfing the heal’s ratio by 2.0. So if you had 1,000 healing, you lost 2,000 AoE healing from the skill.
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They are basically bone minions that bleed on AA afaik. So it wouldn’t be all that meaningful for an MM, about 150DPS each, plus 1.5k (ish) Death Nova damage + poison on death. Also remember that going into Lich instantly kills all your minions and puts them on CD.
So you’d get a fairly decent amount of DPS while they were alive, I’m guessing right around 1k, plus the Death Nova. But lose on about 600 DPS from Flesh Golem.
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It is already impossible to watch 5v5 teamfights, even more plus the NPCs would be entirely unwatchable.
Yeah, unfortunately ANet really removed any way to debate that it is a bad idea. They demolished its scaling, lowered its base healing IIRC, and then halved the time that it would exist as a field.
I’m not saying that the immunity to condis is the wrong approach, I just don’t like it. I don’t see why they couldn’t add an attribute to skills that labels an area as “imminent AoE” or “current AoE” to assist with AI. I’m no AI expert, but adding some flags would be the easy part. But really, you’re probably right, not a whole lot would necessarily change in the fight. Watch the minions for their tells, focus the Necro him/herself, only this time the minions might not fall over due to collateral. I’ve just seen “immune to condis” in various places that struck me as odd, because changing it to “immune to direct damage” in those places would cause a literal nuclear explosion on these forums.
Adding flags wouldn’t be “hard”, it would simply require someone to manually add that to every single (relevant) skill in the game. It is a ton of boring work, and has the potential to introduce a massive number of bugs. You are correct though, it wouldn’t actually be difficult, it is just a bit more code for each skill, and it would fit into something like an expansion (where you traditionally go through and re-code at least part of the game), and would then allow changes like this.
Also a big difference between “immune to condis” and “immune to direct damage” is that everyone deals direct damage, even condi builds deal some direct damage. But not everyone applies damaging condis. Especially in the case of carrion, there isn’t a massive difference in the amount of power between a condi/power build, the big difference is crit/ferocity multipliers.
And I fully think that minions needing to path up small ledges is a failure of the AI. Why not have the AI jump up the ledge after them? Especially if they have to run around to a ramp on the side, then the player jumps back down and they have to run back around. That’s AI/pathing issues, and I don’t see why that wouldn’t be incorporated in some of the fixes. I’m not against kiting, but that style of gaming the kiting system shouldn’t be such an easy thing to do.
Fair enough, but that is a level of changes above what I’m looking to address. That requires a full rework of how AI works. Its still a good idea, just beyond the scope of what we could reasonably suggest.
And with respect to just running around in a circle, perhaps the minions should be 10% faster than players, or benefit from boons (such as Swiftness) that are on the Necro? Then you’d have to actually use snares/slows to kite, which is how I personally think kiting should be anyway. Simply being able to run and attack without being caught also just doesn’t seem right, but perhaps they’re compensating for the Necro helping their pets out with his/her own control.
I also don’t think the Minions should be so squishy, I just think it’s truly the AI that is selling mobility short.
I think the biggest problem is that minions have to stop to attack, but players don’t. In normal PvP, equal speed still allows a melee target to chase and hit their enemy all the time. But for minions, once they reach the target they stop, do their attack animation, then start running again, and the distance created during that one attack is enough that without a speed difference they will never be able to hit again. So one way to fix it would be to simply allow them to attack and move at the same time like we do. Another would be a small speed buff, yes, or simply a way to give them swiftness outside Pack Runes.
The AI is definitely hurting mobility, yes. Ideally they would be pretty equal. Also worth noting that most mobile minions are melee, which makes the AI issues worse/more prevalent.
Blood Fiend needs so much work that a finisher doesn’t even begin to address it. He’s also even harder to aim than bone minions.
Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1
I don’t actually think axe/focus is that bad right now. People just expect axe to be a high damage weapon when it just isn’t designed to do that, and focus’ only issues are weird animations/cast times.
Oh yeah, I forgot they gutted Well of Blood for absolutely no reason a while back. Yeah, its probably fine to be a water field now that it got nerfed (for absolutely no reason).
I wait for the day when guardian spirit weapons will be buffed for the sake of buffing unused builds and we will have a new AI meta.
Wouldn’t take much, give them an elite Spirit Weapon and a better trait path and it’ll work. We’ll have all kinds of PvPets.
Mobility on minions should provide pressure that follows you, a problem you have to deal with that you can’t necessarily outrange. I can’t help but think that they are less reliable specifically because of AI, not regardless of it. And if they can be that easily kited when you have a Necro that can very likely cripple/chill as well, then that also sounds, to me, like an AI problem or a slight design problem (in case minions are any slower than players).
You can infinitely kite minions by running in a circle. They have the same run speed as a player when in combat, and while the Necro does have a fair amount of soft CC, it is still extremely easy to kite when you can jump up onto a ramp, run around a bit, then jump down and the minions take 5 seconds to get back. That isn’t a failure of the AI, but simply that it is the only way for them to accomplish things. Turrets would simply sit back with you on point, waiting for the person to come back, since the stall tactic is irrelevant if it doesn’t mess with moving minions.
Now, I’m not saying that them being able to be kited should be fixed, I think that is a valid weakness of the build. I just don’t think that you can use minions being mobile as an excuse for why they have to be so squishy. There is some power in them being able to chase like that, but there is give and take in the mobility that balances itself out, their being mobile shouldn’t be used as an argument to deny them other strength.
There’s something about being invulnerable to condi damage that just really rubs me the wrong way, though, in every way that it’s applied in this game. I’d rather see a blanket 75% damage reduction from AoE-type damage than any damage-type immunity.
Well, unfortunately AoE abilities don’t have a separate coding in this game, unlike say League. In League abilities have a “quality” that can be set to either single target or AoE, which then affects their interactions. But in GW2 there is no innate distinction that other things can call on to say “this ability is AoE, therefore minions take X% less damage from them”. The AoE is coded into the skill only in the form that it is allowed to hit multiple targets, but to my knowledge they have no quality to be called in a different section of code.
And really, what change would there be? You wouldn’t target individual minions with conditions, you’d want to focus the MM themselves. With the rest of the changes we’re talking about, minions would have a maximum DPS of 1.4k with VM, you just wouldn’t be focusing them.
The fact remains that it doesn’t affect the engineer in any way by dodging thumper. He presses a button when you’re near thumper and the deed is done. You’re wasting a dodge you could have used on something else. Point still stands. So yeah, doesn’t make it any less braindead. And it makes it even better, as a decent engi can combo OS into thumper knockback.
So, you’re complaining that you have to use a dodge to dodge an engi’s utility skill?
I think it’s valid to consider the repercussions of looking at what is working for another class and saying “We need that too”, when in fact that mechanic might be exclusionary to other builds. Condition immunity is ultra touchy for me, as I hate things that make it so builds like Condi Mancer can’t do any damage whatsoever. Sure, there are cripple/chill options in an AoE for a build like that, but can they afford to spend that much effort trying to soft CC the minions while the Necro him/herself can have free reign?
The thing is that you don’t have to choose either or, that is why AoE is so strong against MM. You never make the choice between “do I hit the necro” OR “do I hit the minions”, you always focus the necromaner and by merit of you having AoE you hit the minions as well.
Mobility may always be a benefit when implemented correctly without AI issues, but a lack of mobility also isn’t always a detriment. I think that’s the point they were making.
The more clear point is: what accompanies mobility/immobility with minions, not players. You are both thinking of mobility as players, not as minions/turrets within a build.
What does mobility give minions that is so helpful? The answer is very little. They are slightly more adaptable to changing situations, but are also far less reliable (this is the case regardless of AI issues). They can fight off point but are also much more likely to be kited.
The reality is that minions don’t benefit from mobility like a player would. An immobile player can end up with your team fighting uneven matches, but minions vs turrets don’t have this issue. Immobile players aren’t as able to keep up with their target or get away from damage, but minions don’t avoid damage and they have worse target uptime on an enemy because of ranged vs melee (melee also means they are going to suffer far more AoE than turrets). Mobility also means they can get clumped together and instakilled. It isn’t the same as players, for summons mobility is not always good, it depends on the type of summon, and for minions vs turrets turrets make up for their immobility with reliability; minions “pay” too much for that mobility just like Necromancers “pay” too much defense for the access to DS (though that is a different topic).
Mobility in principle isn’t ever bad. Like Cogbyrn said and I’ve said before, I think if they fixed all of the issues with pathing and AI it would go a long way to addressing the problems the MM currently faces. Once that is addressed, I genuinely feel that we can take a more active approach and still achieve the goal of improving the ability for minions to connect with an opponent. I don’t think it’s fair to claim that mobility itself is bad when it’s the bugs that are making minions bad, not the notion of mobility itself.
You’re thinking of mobility alone, but that is irrelevant to a discussion of turrets vs minions. Turrets aren’t just immobile minions, and it is the other differences that lend themselves to turrets being much better “despite” them being unable to move. The bugs are not the only thing
Bhawb said above that the problem is minions not even reaching their targets, and I still think that adding active ways to do that is better than passive ways. Being able to kill a minion with AOE damage is important, and that shouldn’t be removed. Bone Minions, for instance, could get an invul when their skills is activated that they use to rush their target. I still think that’s better than just passively making the minions super buff. Shadow Fiends could pulse blind periodically around themselves, and maybe their pulse could even be a smoke field, giving the minionmancer access to stealth through blasts from Bone Minions, and stealthing minions would help a lot. Things like that I consider far superior to immunities, and that’s the sort of thing I’d like to see more of. That’s all I’m saying.
It isn’t important though, because you don’t think about it. No one ever thinks “hey I could hit the necromancer, OR I could use this damage to kill their bone minions, I wonder which is a better idea for this situation”, they just smash their face on the keyboard, crap out tons of AoE, and the minions happen to die as a consequence of the exact same actions they would take in every fight. Bone Minions only have 5.2k HP without traiting. We’re proposing that they have roughly 6.2k HP when traited, which is an extremely low amount of HP to deal with. They are still extremely susceptible to AoE, just not passive AoE fire fields or a single dragon tooth crit, and are now more susceptible to single target hits.
Minions aren’t going to be passively super buff, they will be weaker by on average 3k HP to everything except crits and condi damage.
wait im confused passives dont work in ds?
i thought they did cause the symbols dont go away
Signet passives don’t work in DS, as far as the game is concerned you have unequipped the skills.
ANet hates MM but likes turrets, so turrets > MM.
Turrets have had a lot of their issues fixed. They are immobile so no pathing issues, they won’t die to random AoE nearly as easily as minions, they also spam out boons, deal relatively high damage, plus supply crate is insanely good. They are even easier to use than minions with less counters.
Minions on the other hand have a ton of issues. Long activation times, delayed blast finishers, buggy AI, plus they die to AoE extremely quickly. Pair that with the fact that the only recent changes ANet has made were either nerfs (vampiric master, putrid explosion, training of the master) or game breaking bugs (flesh of the master), and it is obvious which one would be better.
So turret > minions simply because one have had their issues fixed and the other has had issues tacked on.
Sanctuary has reasonable claim to BM/DM/SR, I don’t think any one of them really fits better than the rest. Unholy Martyr really doesn’t fit BM though I agree, but its also a pretty awful trait that has no place right now.
They involve the person making a whirling motion. Axe 2 I guess could qualify, since it is basically a ranged version of some whirl skills,. Enfeebling blood I’d say is just as fitting for a blast as it is for a whirl. Neither one fits super well, but if we need to force the issue for them to ever give us a finisher then so be it.
Well, we do technically have projectile finishers, but yes we have a few skills that could qualify for blast or projectile but don’t currently have them, but not whirl or leap.
There are more intelligent ways to do a dodge mechanic for minions if that route is the way to go. It shouldn’t dodge roll at the first sign of an AOE attack, it should understand what kind of AOE it is in and determine how threatening it is. Maybe it should tank the weaker AOE, but as soon as a meteor shower goes down it will attempt to dodge out of it if possible. AI doesn’t have to be one-dimensional. ANet brought on an AI guy who’s working on HoT, and maybe some of that will be imparted on minions across all builds.
Again, all you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. AoE builds that counter MM don’t have a single AoE, they spam it out with nearly every attack. Hambow (or GS/LB) warriors have AoE on nearly every attack. Minions can’t simply dodge out of the LB F1, it leaves a field behind that will kill them regardless. Even if they are “smart” enough to get out of it, now they’re stuck sitting outside the AoE and for the duration of the field the warrior has now removed more than 50% of your minion damage. And what happens when its over? Warrior still has a ton of AoE, all of which will destroy your minions extremely quickly. Same thing with eles, they can dodge a single meteor shower, but then what are they going to do against the other 6+ (not including AAs) AoE skills? They can also dodge all the engi grenades or bombs they want, there are more waiting. Also, every time they dodge you’re losing out on damage and utility. This doesn’t fix the issue, and it doesn’t add counterplay to the builds that we have trouble with, it simply makes it so that you have X less AoE skills that will hit the minions (X being their dodges).
Bone Minions are terrible no matter what in their current incarnation. Balancing the passive defense of every minion in order to get Bone Minions to survive AOEs and reach their targets reliably will undoubtedly push them over the top. Imagine if Bone Minions instead had some sort of Mist Form that they would use when you activated their skill, along with a movement speed bonus to reach their target. Then, when that mist form ended they would blow up regardless of how far they’d gotten. That would invoke play/counterplay because a player could kite the minions, but the minions themselves become invulnerable during that phase to help them reach their target.
Bone minions are the only reason this build can exist. Remove Bone Minions and there is no MM, they are the single most important minion, with the exception of Flesh Golem, which you could debate is equally as important. Without Bone Minions you don’t have weakness uptime, you don’t have reliable poison uptime, you don’t have burst damage, you have no ways to deal with a downed enemy if they have backup, the build falls apart. Their current incarnation (minus late blast finishers), assuming they reach the target is fine, they simply need a way to not die to someone who is passively spamming AoE.
That’s just one example; there are multiple other solutions to the problems other than what you’re proposing.
The problem is all minions dying to AoE. The only way to fix this is to increase their effective HP. This can be done in multiple ways, but this is the one that has proven itself to work in game right now.
Yeah, turrets are much more durable, but that’s the point. Engineers can’t move their turrets, while we can move our minions. If you out-rotate a team with a turret engineer then you will always win the two-cap and win the game anyway.
You can move turrets by picking them up. Know what happens when an MM moves from one point to another? Their AI bugs because of pathing issues and you have to wait for them to die, their CD to come back, and then be resummoned to have your build back. The only benefit minions have is an easier time fighting off point, but that is completely irrelevant (except on Khylo if you have to kill a treb) because neither build ever wants to fight off point.
I recognize what you’re trying to address, but I strongly believe that addressing it as you have solves one problem to introduce another, all while not addressing the base issue in the first place. Some passive traits are okay, like the bonus HP or bonus damage traits, but nothing as massive as immunity to condi/crits, especially not as a master trait.
Turrets have it baseline, we’re forced to invest a master trait to get it.
Mobility is always a benefit. There are bugs with minion AI and other pathing issues that hold back minionmancers, and those things should be fixed. I do not disagree with that.
Them moving is not always a benefit. Moving minions means my minions can be kited up and down ramps, they can be kited around with movement disabling effects, there are plenty of issues with them being mobile compared to turrets. The fact that turrets can be placed safely and still contribute to the fight is a big strength.
You’re right, turrets are valuable in the right scenario and minions aren’t in the best of places right now. Neither of these things being true negates that mobility is always a benefit. Spirit Rangers trait specifically so that their spirits follow them because it is very valuable that they do. That good turret Engineers can help out across a map with their turrets is them taking advantage as best they can of their situation. I think the passive sustain on turrets is too high currently and should be dialed back. I do not think we should be pushing to get every other AI npc up to the level of passive sustain of a turret.
We’re not asking for turret sustain, we’re asking for the passive defense they have that allows that sustain to matter. Spirit rangers want spirits to follow them because the spirits don’t suffer the issues that minions do with their mobility. Spirits don’t get kited, they can’t have their damage lowered by running away, it is helpful for them to move because unlike turrets they can’t be picked up to change points, and by having them mobile you know their passive will always be in range. They have none of the mobility drawbacks that minions have.
Actually, Necro has no proper whirls right now. A swirling effect is not what makes a whirl finisher, whirls are literally when the character spins around in a circle, just like leaping requires a character to leap, and projectiles require projectiles.
A whirl finisher without the person whirling around like an idiot just doesn’t fit the current system.
The proc is actually really nice, its the same as Vamp runes, which I used to love (the removal of mixing kind of killed that set for me though). I’m not sure how relevant the set is for condi Necros though, seems like condi duration is a far better stat.
One thing I want to know for a long time, did they run out of time to make minion model for shadow fiend? Why is it so much different from other minions? Why is it shadow? It just feels out of place.
It originally could only be summoned while in DS, so it was made to look spectral to match.
They aren’t zombies, so why should they look like zombies. They are animated golems of decaying organic matter, so the weird hodge-podge of body parts is exactly what they should look like.
Yeah I mean if they fixed it so the healing worked I’m down.
Your dodge example means nothing. You don’t need to bait out a dodge and then choose between focusing them or the necromancer, you simply use a weak AoE that forces them to dodge, and then follow up with your normal AoE spam which kills them in 1-2 hits while still hitting the Necro because it covers the entire point. There is no active play, the MM isn’t any more skillful, the enemy hasn’t really changed anything, all that happens is the minions can avoid 1-2 more hits before dying. There is no amount of power that will alleviate this, even if bone minions did 50k damage per Putrid Explosion it doesn’t matter if they can’t reach their target due to passive AoE spam, and that is exactly what is happening right now.
I can tell you after playing turret that they live through AoE vastly better than MM. I was able to easily keep them alive through 2v1s against warriors with LB and shatter mesmers. Minions wouldn’t be quite as strong either, because they’d still have to get in range (whereas turrets can’t be kited), and don’t have passive 350 HP/s healing while also spamming out 4 boons constantly.
The problem we are trying to address with that single change is that minions die too quickly to allow any kind of meaningful play to the build. What has been proposed is something that currently works in game, it has already proven itself. The problem of MM being easy to pick up and low skill is unrelated to their defense, it is their offensive capability. That separate issue is being addressed with changes to Training of the Master, which forces you to smartly use their actives or be extremely weak.
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The problem is that no amount of active offense will matter when they die to single abilities. This has shown to work for turrets, which are the only summons that are currently competitively viable.
The skill cap is using their active abilities, but to get that skill cap to a point of being relevant they can’t die instantly. Even if they dodged abilities you’re simply delaying their instant death by a few seconds, and it wouldn’t matter to persistent AoE effects like LB F1.
For PvE you shouldn’t have 6 in soul reaping so you don’t have a 50% increase.
After playing some games on turret engi I am 100% convinced that condi (damage)/crit immunity wouldn’t be remotely OP for a Master tier investment. It is such a nice change for your summons to actually live through a single LB F1 from warrior.
In PvE if you want to actually max out your DPS you want to max out crit chance. Although Berserker is the “go to” for your normal setup, having a second set of assassin gear to be able to mix in to give you 100% crit chance (without going over) is best. Just make sure to consider your group buffs, since you should have 100% fury uptime if you’re with an ele, spotter with a ranger. So just see what you’re paired with then mix in assassin for the rest.
And obviously you’ll have food.
Yeah, I wouldn’t like it because it’d waste both of my sigils (DS changes ples). I run Leeching/Renewal for my MM, which means if I entered DS at the wrong time I’d lose around 2k healing.
I would like to be able to have back the ability to weaponswap while in DS though. I know some people who would be very happy to have that back, although its about 2 years too late since that got bugged and was added as a “feature”.
Yeah, that’s not all that weird honestly. Chances are Deathly Swarm had the new condition added to what it is able to transfer, whereas Consume Conditions didn’t.
I really wish there was a way for us to control it and it still be substantial.
That’s the hard part for me. We could make a list of changes that’d put it in the same realm as TotM, where it added a unique anti-boon effect to each active skill so that you’d know when it procs… but then you have tooltips the size of small books and potentially OP. I’d also argue that MM has the potential for fine boon removal already, if only focus wasn’t a 1.5 year cast time.
It would be more interesting to me if it was a non-minion specific skill that instead of just removing boons would steal boons from an enemy and share them with your allies. Maybe like change Life Blast to do that on an X ICD.
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So, Sikari and I were talking about that, and its not a simple fix, really. The problem I see is that the trait is a GM competing directly with Death Nova, an amazing MM trait. So to properly fix the trait we’re looking at having to give it functionality as strong as Death Nova, but different. I just don’t see an easy way to do that without giving it TotM treatment (put boon removal on the actives), which would result in some massive tooltips.
Unless you were asking something else entirely, and asking about rolling Necromanctic Corruption into Training of the Master. Its possible, but I’d prefer to keep it more about simply improving the utility of their current uses/increased damage than also putting boon removal in.
I think the best way to address Necromantic Corruption would be to more or less axe the trait, and in its place have a trait that provided an “opposite” to DN. Like a trait that gave minions some kind of self-sustain or way to stay alive. I can’t say I have any ideas at the moment, since Training of the Master’s proposed changes would pretty much rule out having another change like that (such tooltips, many words, wow). But no more super RNG boon removal, it’d have to be something with a much clearer activation.
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Ah, I hadn’t seen that it wasn’t there, its hard to remember where I’m at when we’ve shot so many ideas back and forth.
First off, obviously +1. I am in no way biased when I say this is a really well written and great set of suggestions.
Also, the reason we suggest AoE reduction and condi reduction is this: as long as minions do not have any form of AoE or damaging condi resistance there are only two ways to make sure that they don’t instantly die to spammed AoE: lots of HP or lots of healing. The problem is that either one of those simply adds a binary situation where you either have enough AoE to instantly kill them all, which has absolutely no play/counterplay along with it, or don’t, in which case they have so much HP/healing that you can’t even begin to harm them.
Basically, by giving AoE reduction to the minions only, you open up the ability to lower their overall HP. This means if you want to kill the minions you have the ability to actually focus them down (lower HP), but you can no longer have an easy matchup against MM simply by having so much AoE there is no counterplay to it.
+1, it makes exactly 0 sense that we’re the only profession that can turn off our own signet passives without activating the skill.