Guild Wars 2

Aside from bug fixes and obvious stuff to just make minions act as they are supposed to, they just need to make sure the playstyle is always about the active part of the minions (like how Bone Minions are absolutely awful if you can’t land Putrid Explosion), and away from just stuff that happens by keeping them out.

I’d also love to see increases in types of playstyles, since right now there is only really one valid playstyle and just a few variations of it.

Here you go notice that on the “tooltip” thing it has on the right there is a 20s ICD. So yes, you can only apply it to one target every 20 seconds. I’d highly suggest you aim for other sources of weakness. Dagger OH, Staff 3/4 combo, poison field/bone minions, Weakening Shroud, CPC, pretty much everything is better tbh.

Pregnantman.8259:

A bit offtopic but I think I heard that Blood Fiend’s passive heal was fixed so that it is now affected by healing power. Can anyone confirm it? Thank you.

It doesn’t scale. If it did scale then it’d be significantly stronger, since according to the tooltip it should heal for 1.4k per hit (just a bit shy of 500 HP/s).

Might is not a condition damage multiplier, it is an additive increase, which is very different.

Just like I’ve said in the 10 other recent AI topics, minion AI has cyclical issues. It will get fixed/broken/fixed/broken over and over. Eventually it’ll be fine again.

Dreaminspace.2638:

I don’t know if this has been said or not.

But it would be nice if they gave Necros the ability to control their minions much like a ranger can control his pet. (Too make it simple the commands would work on all minions as one – much like a hive mind) Pretty Much – Attack and Return to Me

Its unlikely. They’ve said they don’t want to blur the lines between Ranger/other minions.

Our CDs are pretty average.

I’ve been around since BWE 2 or around there, and I have played minions since then in PvE, WvW, and sPvP. I’m basically only known for my minion knowledge, which I’d consider second to none (with the one exception being ronpierce, who might have better in game experience at least in PvP, and is a better player than I).

I have tested minion stats multiple times myself. I used to have a notebook with every meaningful stat (DPS, DPS with any traiting, VM HP/s, armor, HP, aggro distance, attack speed, and back when their AI was a bit weird I had a list of all their aggro behaviors). All utility minions have approximately 10k HP in sPvP, with bone minions sharing that pool (5k each). Blood/Golem have 13k. In PvE that value was increased by 71% a while ago, plus obviously the 50% increase trait. Minion armor also ranges from 2100ish to 2800ish. So from simply a statistical basis, they are base as tanky as light/medium classes who haven’t heavily invested in defensive stats, and are a bit below a, say, Soldier stat Warrior.

I literally said that minions weren’t as durable… and you countered with they aren’t as durable? Okay? I admitted in practice they aren’t as durable since they don’t avoid damage. However you can’t just summon 6 light-medium classes every 30 seconds either. Grenade engineers, trap rangers, and hambow warriors are really the only builds that are commonly used that basically hard counter minions due to the brainless AoE spam they can put out. I’ve stood toe to toe with the old D/D ele bunkers that used to crap AoE all over, I’ve wrecked plenty of builds that have AoE, and I’m not even that good of a player. Its a matter of knowing what you’re doing as an MM (in a standard minion setup, unless you’ve screwed up your positioning only shadow fiend and flesh golem are in meaningful danger from PBAoE, bone minions deal their highest DPS with dying anyway).

I don’t recall the specific patch that messed it up, I had basically quit playing much for quite a while. At launch minion AI was fine, super insanely murder-everything-that-moves aggressive, but it worked. A while after when they killed the aggression they had very weird aggro rules that included stuff like needing to use two targeted skills in a row. After that minions became pretty unresponsive for a while, then it was amazing for a while where they would start attacking at the beginning of the casting of any targeted ability. If you used untargeted AoE they’d simply attack once you hit something. Minions are better in sPvP than they are in PvE. In PvE they are subpar utilities you really only ever want to use to compliment a full berzerker glass DPS build, since they give you and your group crutches. In WvW they are good for dueling and roaming, and very small fights. Also good in full MM zergs, but otherwise I wouldn’t take them against many people.

Yes I’ve had them deal with terrain issues. You’re supposed to be a minion MASTER, not a minion “kitten why aren’t they doing what they are supposed to”. Part of that includes learning the specific terrain issues. If flesh golem’s charge would have sent him off a cliff, he often bugs, same thing can happen if you are summoning minions during a fight but not making them aggro. And yes aggro works equally with all weapons, however newer players struggle with some like staff or dagger, because for a while dealing damage and using a targeted ability was necessary, both of which can cause issues in those weapons.

Again, minion MASTER. If you don’t know where your minions are why do you expect them to just magically fly to their target without fail? Bone Fiend has a guaranteed 4s immobilize that can easily lead into nearly 15s of hard CC just from you. I’ve secured kills with it all the time because it has such awful telegraphs (barely existant) that no one sees it, even other MMs. Charge is also super easy to land if you’re paying attention. If the minion’s active misses you have no one to blame but yourself. You can even complain about terrain issues, but when you pick that skill you also take responsibility for how it works as is in game right now. If you can’t play MM right now because its too buggy or hard, then don’t. Feel free to try to get it fixed, I’d love to see it done, but the reality is that MM gameplay, and general AI gameplay, is 90% knowledge, positioning, awareness, and use of the minions.

They had great AI a few times, the most recent a few months ago. I didn’t write the day in my diary, but it wasn’t that long ago.

Edit: I can literally go on forever. I have made hundreds and hundreds of minion posts and I’ve done specific testing in game where I did nothing but sat down with a notebook, the wiki, and sometimes a stopwatch to test minion stats and behavior. In this one single area of the game I am confident in my knowledge completely and totally.

Again, AI has cyclical issues. Its been good/bad/good/bad, etc. They’ve somehow related the AI to other parts of the code that get changed, because otherwise it shouldn’t just randomly screw up for no reason.

Rounds off the decimal places to the nearest quarter of a second, it does not show exact durations.

Healing Necro heals for more than any other build in the game. Assuming this trait can be aimed properly it’d be a pretty crazy boost.

Its nice as an incidental “oh hey I passively applied some weakness and it did something”, but not good enough to make you go out of your way to sacrifice other things for it. The only time I’d really consider dropping something else for it is with CPC, since just dropping one utility (which usually isn’t massive for necros in PvE) gets you comparatively a lot, and I’d only do that in a group with decent weakness uptime already, as a means of filling in extra gaps.

But again, the issue is that even with CPC each pulse’s weakness will have fallen off by the next pulse, unless there are other sources of weakness or 100% condi duration.

Lingering curse applies to the base conditions, not condition duration itself, so it doesn’t count towards the 100% cap.

Brando.1374:

can you imaging the amount of complaints if we where able to get % damage traits to work with condition damage.

This. Our condition damage is already one of the highest (if not the highest) in actual combat.

It technically heals for a lot, when you consider it can heal multiple people (technically) on a 1s CD. The issue isn’kittens healing, its the lack of hitting.

I haven’t had a chance no, although if its still in question I’ll try it out tomorrow after lab.

Chances are though you’re correct; linear projectiles get LoS’d if they cannot “see” foot to foot (example is sieging in WvW, where defenders often need to stand at the very edge to hit people below with projectiles, but are also immune to pretty much anything, even the attacks hitting them in the face, if they don’t). In this case I imagine that since the blast originates and ends around your torso (and that of the target), instead of being at the ground, that its simply passing over the hitbox of the intended recipient of the healing. So while obviously passing through the character model, as far as the game is concerned it isn’t meeting the projectile requirements to hit.

Not that surprising, given ANet’s record, but sad nonetheless. Rennoko’s idea to just make it a “splash” around the target could easily fix this, but then again that is far too logical.

10/10 Anet, as always. I hope all of you who rolled Norn Necros for WvW have an Asura backup :P

Noble.3647:

Without “Flesh of the Master” Minions are incredibly Fragile – even with it, Bone Minions are still pretty fragile. And all minions are very susceptible to AOE & Condition Damage – “Putrid Mark” used to be very helpful in ridding minions of conditions, until Putrid Mark was nerfed into USELESSNESS recently. So now afflicted minions just die quickly. Minions die so easily that I thought of suggesting that Death Nova be an automatic trait – at least make people pay for destroying the beasts. But, could you imagine the outcry if that happened?

Minions have base 10k or 13k HP in sPvP untraited (roughly), and about 2100-2600 armor, again fairly standard. The average minion is about as durable as the average player, although obviously a player doesn’t just stand around eating damage.

In PvE, minions have base 17k or base 22k (again roughly), same armor. This makes them on average more durable than any player except those heavily invested in defensive stats (they have more HP and armor than the base a warrior gets). With added HP, they are significantly more durable than nearly any player build (again, assuming that player has no active defense).

Now obviously in practice players are far more durable, because they will actively avoid damage and have ways to actively or even passively block it, while minions do not on their own. However, players cannot just be summoned 6 at a time on a 30s CD either. So no, frankly minions are quite durable, even untraited, as long as you aren’t trying to fight a boss that has an AoE one shot mechanic or something similar.

Noble.3647:

Minions are ridiculously Weak – and they keep getting nerfed. Did you know “Training of the Master” used to give minions a 50% bonus to Minion Damage – but that has been Reduced by 50%!! “Protection of the Horde” used to give +50 Toughness – that has been reduced to +20 Toughness = a 40% reduction! “Haunt” is shown to be an instantaneous attack – but it isn’t; the Shadow Fiend seems to strain as if taking a dump for a second before it attacks. The Flesh Golem “Charge” is unbelievably unreliable – as it can get blocked by a pebble, uneven cobblestone, or a tree or the sheer corner or a building.

I’m sorry, are you quoting beta here? Because since launch all of your actual numbers are inaccurate, unless I totally missed a patch somewhere (I’ve been playing minions since BWE 2 I believe), and I find that highly unlikely that I missed something major about minions.

Noble.3647:

And their AI has never been great…

Again the basis is not entirely true. They have had amazing AI at points, and bad at others. Its a cycle. You get used to it, it sucks, but it happens.

Noble.3647:

One of the craziest things about minions is if you Reduce the Cooldown on your Minions, Minion Master still does not reduce the cooldowns on their secondary attacks. I think Necromancers are the only profession that is not given a reduced recharge on something that should have a reduced recharge time.

This is not how the trait is intended to work. You get 20% reduction on the summon skill, otherwise it’d be pretty insanely strong.

Noble.3647:

I still contend that we NEED an F–Button assigned to FORCE minions to attack/call target FOR THE MINIONS. They will probably never be smart enough to navigate some maps, but AT LEAST have them ATTACK who/what & when we want. The frustration felt at, after forcing a minion to attack [with Charge, Haunt, etc.] & having that attack succeed, then having that minion afterwards IGNORE the target that it just attacked is inexpressible & exhausting. Yet this has happened over and over and over and over again for over a year. If that is not a sign of broken AI, I don’t know what it.

Its called using a skill. When their AI is functional, they begin to attack at the beginning of the channel of any targeted skill (with maybe the slightest delay as they get moving), when untargeted AoE damages something, or when either they or you take damage. There is no need for a force attack button once they eventually fix the AI again.

With the exception of withstanding AI bugs, and a very slight nerf to TotM/Vampiric Master (although vampiric master has been bugged for so long I don’t remember if it has actually been nerfed much in comparison to the Vampiric buffs), minions have been consistently improved and buffed since launch.

Yes, because that was part of our original design that got lost in translation from GW1 to GW2. It used to be far more pronounced of self-harm for way stronger of effects.

On a side note, I have a feeling it will take me forever to get used to the new trait system.

New offensive runes didn’t really change much, although there were some very slight potential buffs because of the proc go-over. Defensive runes however saw a number of good buffs. Water, Monk, maybe Dolyak (haven’t checked how it scales now), Melandru is still good, might be a few others I didn’t look at.

20/30/0/0/20 or 0/30/20/0/20 are both fine for condi, not sure what is going to be best yet, kind of depends on your own needs I guess.

Runes should be nightmare, I don’t know of any other that are worthwhile comparatively for a condi build.

The might does, but you don’t deal much self-damage with bleeds, is my point. Its not all that big of a deal in PvE if you have some bleeding on you.

Warhorn is an unblockable AoE long CC. Makes it possible to counter a lot of healing skills, rezzes, stomps, etc. It is comparable to reaper’s mark in many functions.

WH 5 gives you a long amount of swiftness, over 100% cripple uptime, meaning anyone you catch in it should never escape, plus it generates a lot of LF, like a LOOOOOOT of LF. 20% per person caught in it for the full duration, it can potentially fill your entire LF bar on its own in one cast (it will overfill giving you 110% if you have gluttony). Its all a matter of preference, all of our OH weapons are very strong in their own way.

It’s jokingly called dumbfire because it was widely considered to be a fairly dumb trait to implement in the way it was. It made Necros way too strong just by pressing 1 a lot, was stupid that it had an on-crit proc in a non-crit tree (and at the time a lot of necros weren’t running crit chance on condi either), and the addition of burning along with torment and some other things in the same patch made us even crazier.

TL;DR its called dumbfire because it was a dumb trait.

Its not like it deals that much damage if you’re a full power build.

Except conditions on Necro can get out of control very quickly.
Assuming 100 damage per bleed tick (quite low for a condi build), just 30% bleed duration (from Spite tree, again quite low), and that the bleeds go the full duration:

Mark of Blood heals for 156 per target hit (104 in PvP)
Each scepter auto attack heals for 33
Grasping Dead: 137 per target (91 in PvP)
Enfeebling Blood: 130 per target
Blood is Power: 390 (although obviously you’ll net lose HP still if you don’t transfer)

And those are just some of our basic bleeds at very low values. When you start hitting multiple people it starts getting more. It is far from mediocre, and scales way better than any other life steal trait we have. People are expecting way too much from this trait.

I’m still figuring out my new MM build in PvP. Still 20/0/30/20/0, nothing changed there, but I’m currently trying clerics/water runes with leeching/something. I’m also tempted to try the new on-swap next 3 attacks crit sigil with valk/30 in SR.

Cogbyrn is correct, it only ever proc’d once, it still only procs once, they just changed the proc’ing (for better or worse).

In PvE I don’t think its gotten any worse really. It isn’t that big of a deal to just change your rotation to entering DS every 10 seconds for damage. It might be a slight loss of damage in really, really hard situations where you always need to wait on DS for defense, but then you could just take the other trait and be better off.

Certain parts of it have been due to mechanics. You could never “block” the ally cleanse, and the self cleanse I believe was also effectively unblockable because condition transfer works in two parts: copy conditions to enemy, wipe conditions on self. I believe it still wiped, but didn’t transfer.

Someone else did :P

And while they did update a lot of tooltips, we’re still Necros, don’t expect too much.

victornajduch.4859:

Hmmm….
Has anyone tried this using multiple necromancers on a single pvp or wvw group?
Seems like this would be never ending life force once a few conditions got applied to someone.

WvW multiple Necros isn’t super rare (full MM zergs), and I have run 5 necro PvP. The issue is that for all your compounding strengths (even just 2 epidemics on one team can wipe teamfights), you also compound weaknesses. So sure they’d have a lot of immunity to conditions, but they’d also be fairly weak to focus, unable to stay on point, etc.

If you do want to run a multi Necro team, I still wouldn’t suggest this. Your team will be able to get more than enough self-cleansing, and utilities like WoP and Plague Signet would be better for the little extra team cleansing.

Btw, Rennoko’s idea to have this pulse once on entry and then every 3 seconds after (like the Death Magic vuln trait) would be way better.

This is one of two traits that are really unimpressive. The rest are at least interesting.

All our off-hands are pretty interchangeable depending on needs. Just pick the one that suits your needs the most. Also a certain number of the effects can be gotten from traits/weapon combos.

They directly buffed every single build that went into DM, and we’re complaining because we weren’t buffed enough? It has nothing to do with how the trait compares to others, but the fact that now you are stronger than you ever would have been before. They have to buff compared to what power existed already.

Jagged horrors weren’t nerfed, they just finally said how they degen. And frankly, it wouldn’t be a meaningful nerf if they did, compared to the straight buffs they did to DM in general.

Pretty sure Nightmare is the way to go in PvP right now

Not every rune/sigil was changed, so not all of them were in the patch notes.

I think the idea is fine. Its supposed to be an effective way for new non-Dhuumfire users to trade a little bit of offense for sustain, and I think it’ll be fine at just that. Don’t expect it to make your condition builds full sustain builds, its just to keep you in fights more.

Haven’t tested it yet personally, but I’ve heard a lot of good feedback about it.

Its supposed to have drawbacks. Now with the right runes you can get massive uptime on it too.

Pelopidas.2140:

if someone uses a cleric/siphon build i would like some feedback

I use clerics MM siphon, its sweet. Only worry is if I don’t deal enough damage to actually finish off certain builds, but honestly I heal for so much its crazy. CC is a 8060 base heal, plus 866 per condition, dagger 2, siphons, plus I have 50% boon duration (so easy 100% regen/retal uptimes), leeching sigils, etc. If I don’t have to worry about conditions I can throw in WoB and then its just a matter of how many people they have to send at me to kill me.

Spectrals in DS were intended, it was patched in on purpose, along with a few accompanying changes/nerfs. Besides that, the new changes buffed MM quite nicely.

The bug changes were really nice overall.

Those traits are gated by that. The only thing that keeps those traits from being ridiculous is the fact that you put yourself in so much danger by just flashing, instead of using DS defensively.

I don’t see a single meaningful thing this actually adds that can’t be done another way (like introducing more traits to make DS/our active defense stronger), while at the same time it introduces at least a few issues. Also, I’m almost always against flat buffs to an entire class. It just introduces issues, especially in a case like this where the buff only exists to make the class easier to play/removes counterplay. If you want DS to be stronger, I’m all for traits/skills to do it, but I dislike this, not to mention it is very unlikely to ever happen.

Flesh Golem is the one who has issues with water, and that’s just because he has no swimming animations, so water is basically an instant death zone for him (water deep enough to trigger swimming). Other than that you just need to make sure you have minions on both skill bars, otherwise its like changing skills with the minions out.

This introduces balance issues, not to mention it really hampers counterplay and doesn’t add any really interesting play on its own. Basically all that happens now is that DS has to be bursted through immediately, to actually give the necro a period of weakness (the 10s for them to build up more LF), or the necro will just sit in DS until their LF generation CDs are up, blow all of them quickly, hop right back in to DS.

I’m against this because of the inevitable nerfs that would come along with it, especially with the new trait coming. It just isn’t worth making DS worse than it is now.

One issue you’re going to find is that minions already have tons of fields/finishers, and giving them more, via weapon sets, would be a bit crazy. Its already 4x projectile finishers, 3x blast finishers, and 7+ poison fields, with all of them on pretty low CDs. I’m all for more finishers, since I think it’d be helpful, but it needs to be done while considering the entire class, not just some (or in this case most) builds.

If they get added, it’d have to be via a trait(s) or utility skills.

Minions have more HP/toughness than almost anything except bunkers. In your standard all zerker PvE group your minions are going to be your tankiest party members, not to mention you can summon 6 of them on relatively short CDs. They aren’t optimal to use in some situations, but that has nothing to do with them being too squishy.

And AI has been a cycle. If you’ve been around for more than a few months, you’ll know that AI has been good, bad, great, awful, etc. it just goes in a circle as they fix then eventually break and fix again.

1. Minion damage does not scale with your own stats, only your condition damage/duration affects the conditions they apply
2. Yes, but again not based on your stats, they each have innate crit chance/damage stats
3. Soldier/clerics is best (power/vitality/toughness or healing power/toughness/power)
4. Yes but I’d only advise it in PvE with a non-full minion build
5. Technically yes, but you also have staff 4, dagger 4, lyssa runes, and fetid consumption (possibly) to remove conditions

Minions are really only suited for entire MM zergs (a whole zerg of all mms), or roaming. A generic build is 20/0/30/20/0

The skill is slow to have counterplay. It is an incredibly strong skill that essentially denies anything short of a perma stealth thief from escaping, so long as it hits; in fact that’s the case with us in general, its impossible to escape if everything hits. Getting it all to hit is an entirely different issue.

That said, you don’t really need to teleport to mobs all that often unless you’re trying to juke people in PvP, mobs are more than happy to come to you.