Guild Wars 2

Minions
Due to reports of minions actually being useful by distracting NPC enemies from their summoner, minions have been upgraded with a 100% aggro redirection to their master.

digiowl

Due to the really stupid AI and the fact that minions die way to easily, especially if there are some AoEs involved, even that wouldn’t matter much.

Exactly. Part of why I suggested they just be a short recharge temp summons.

life steal in general does not scale with much of anything.

Paint it, Black

…with minions that were temporary summons like Mesmer illusions?

It seems like a majority of the minion issues revolve either around environment path finding or combat/non-combat mode toggling, or dying when the Necromancer uses a form change ability or touches water more than ankle deep.

Temporary summons but short recharges for most summons for minions would side step a lot of these issues at least partially, as you would call them out only when you needed them, on the spot, and you would have a much shorter wait before being useful again if something splattered them or you got Moa’d.

The Devs are in a kind of no win bind right now…granted, they let the class deteriorate to the point it is at now, but I’m betting that if they could change the past to not let that happen, they would given the latent rage in this class forum.

They do nothing useful and prevent anyone speccing in Death Magic from having something useful in their place due to their existence.

Minions
They were not attacking as intended. They have been now fixed to attack their summoner.

Other condition damage related issues: (very pertinent to Necromancers)
+Too much condition removal available.
+Too much Vitality stacking instead of Toughness in the meta game.

The class once known as Necromancer has now been renamed to Death Shroudmancer, as it should have been all along. All non Death Shroud skills have been disabled, as they are unnecessary.

Some alternate suggestions for consideration:

1) Make the death shroud abilities replace only the weapon skills but allow us to access our utility skills. Being locked out of your build in order to use the class mechanic is kind of bogus.

2) Give us a trait major or minor (maybe in the Soul line) that grants stability while channeling, and Death Shroud will be amazingly more useful across the various builds without an omgwtfbbq level of power increase.

3) Dark Path needs to be far faster or improved in some other way to justify the slow projectile. Tracking maybe?

Ezekeel.2837

I agree with guidance counselor Blueprint. Yesterday we got a call from Jon’s mother and she made us aware that her son in the last six weeks was target of several bullying attacks perpetrated by people here in the necro forum. According to Jon’s mother her son regularly comes home in tears. Currently that poor little guy is to scared to even open up the necro class forum. This has to stop immediately! Nobody wants the necro forum to turn into a place ruled by fear.

Necro Fears tend to only last 1~1.5 seconds anyways so not like it matters lol.

To chime in with the rest, you are generally better off running without minions in their current state. The closest thing to an exception is the Flesh Golem, which is actually somewhat useful when its AI isn’t having a “special ED” fit.

2 handed executioner’s axe for Necromancers!

This. Just let us save them and use a transmutation stone to apply them.

You’ll still get a hefty money sink out of the stones…arguably more if you simplify the process of getting the appearance you want.

How about having the master determine the pet stats indirectly? Have the game evaluate the overall power of the gear you are wearing (like a gear score) and apply a stat bonus to the pet/minion based on that and the critter type? (ex; bears get vit/tough/power, cats get precision/power/vit, etc)

Rangers that spec into their pet line would of course get better scaling to reflect the investment.

This would go a long way towards helping with the perceived weakness of pets/minions….

As long as the AI gets fixed too that is.

Minion stats and their attacks are likely independent of the caster’s stats.

…Orrian undead chickens.

I think being able to pop a flock of those little buggers on someone would be neat.

Especially if they were like a 1 hp feathered suicide bomb that made a nice loud squawk when they exploded.

Krestfallen.8025

However, I think what we’re running into here is what I personally (emphasis on personally) consider to be the fundamental design “flaw” of Death Shroud. If you look at the way other class mechanics work, they’re all abilities that player can use in addition to all their other weapon skills, utility slots, elites, etc… whereas with us, using death shroud actually locks us out of all our other abilities.

This puts us in a position where unless you build specifically for DS, everytime you use it you’re being asked to make a trade off. The most extreme example of this is with Conditionmancers:— yes, DS can help them stay alive, but then they’re no longer able to stack conditions and thus lose the central focus of their particular playstyle (you’ll note that this, and complaints like this, are very common across the necro forum right now).

Any Gaurdian, regardless of spec, gets benefits from virtues. Any mesmer utilizes shatters. There’s no reason not to steal on any type of thief. No reason not to use adrenaline on a warrior, etc… etc… etc… (classes chosen at random as rhetorical devices only, this is not meant as any kind of particular balance comparison).

I’m not (and I don’t think anyone should be) arguing that DS needs to be some sort of “super” skill. But what it needs (only in my opinion, of course), is to be useful to all Necromancers regardless of how one spends their trait points.

This. Death Shroud on a mark/well build so far as I have tried, only useful as something to do while waiting out cool downs on your abilities that are actually good.

Overall, the ability would arguably be better not being a 2nd HP bar transformation, but rather just 4 skills all necromancers get at anytime that are tied to a resource bar that fills when things die.

You’d have shorter queues actually if people got smart and spread out across the servers.

another option:

1) You cannot transfer to a server your current server is in a WvWvW match-up with.

2) You cannot transfer to a server that is in the lead score wise for its match-up.

C Gunner.9406:

This idea wont work, you can just transfer to an outside server then transfer into the enemy server.

It would be nearly trivial to check prior servers you’ve been on recently and deny any moves that would put you against those.

If you only get one transfer a week or so; then it works fine even without the history check.

To summarize: we have 2 main problems plaguing WvWvW right now:

1) Thoughtless players chasing the victory dragon by continuously transferring to “winning” servers, further exacerbating the unbalanced match-ups.

2) Effectively unstoppable sabotage of supplies via players abusing the server transfer system.

I propose Anet restrict transfers in the following way at minimum:

1) You cannot transfer to a server your current server is in a WvWvW match-up with.

2) You cannot transfer to a server that is in the lead score wise for its match-up.

Heck, the target spam is one of the few things they are useful for.

They don’t dodge or move out of AE’s or otherwise react intelligently in combat, so they kind NEED to be statistically buffed up to compensate.

I think the issue is when simulating mass warfare, many forget the importance of properly simulating mass logistics as well.

Add this on top of team balancing mechanics that aren’t effective enough on their own, then yeah, you’re going to have some fail happening.

Since it was suggested that a thread be posted with the ideas brought up in a closed thread in the WvWvW forum, here we go:

(a note: If my posting tone comes off as combative or overly critical, it’s because I’m having to bring up something that should be obvious to anyone that has played any sort of competitive team game.)

The premise: With how server transfers and populations and the WvWvW queues are currently being handled, there is a strong incentive in the short term for players to stack up with as many people in their time slot as possible to form a mega zerg that dominates that time-slot due to lack of any effective opposition on the other servers in their cluster.

Why? Unfortunately many people are shortsighted and don’t realize they are killing the game mode by doing this in the long term. There is no pvp if no one shows up to oppose you. Add into this that the out-manned buff appears to be ineffective at giving the outnumbered server a fighting chance against mass numerical superiority, as well as the supply/logistics model rewarding the side that can dominate the field first to upgrade their forts and keeps, and also add in players swapping servers specifically to drain supply with no way of addressing it in game for the server getting sabotaged this way…..

It becomes increasingly clear the player community cannot handle server balancing on their own without some hand holding.

And just so I am not just complaining without offering some sort of constructive ideas: (please feel free to add in some, people!)
—-
One idea could be scaling transfer costs- if going from a server that in the time slot you are playing in is high population to a lower pop server, you get a discounted or possibly free transfer. Maybe even retention of guild influence.

In reverse, you could be locked out entirely of going to a server with a high population in that time slot from a low pop server; or pay a higher transfer fee.

This will of course require accurate and up to date data mining tied into the transfer system. Could be a nightmare to implement.
—-
Another option could be to alter the supply system to make it harder to have a fully upgraded battlefield once your opposition has logged off, or make it so you can only have so many upgraded forts at one time, etc. Basically give the server that had people that aren’t on 24/7 a fighting chance once they do log on by making it harder to support a zerg logistically.
—-
Another option is scaling WvWvW queue caps; queue is capped to what the lowest in the trio can field at a given time. An incredibly draconian option though, and exploitable if you allow transfers to be too unrestricted/frequent.
—-
Another idea is to actually give the players access to some server metrics to better assist them in making informed (and hopefully good) decisions on their own, such as what time slot coverage a server has in terms of total population, etc. Of course, on it’s own, many might use this to continue to be silly and server time slot stack and then wonder why they can’t get a good fight.

All I can say is, unless something gets done, the server pops are likely to continue to condense down to three main time slots: EU, NA, and Oceanic, and none of them with anyone to fight since the players kept flocking to whomever wins during their play time slot.

Yay.

One idea could be scaling transfer costs- if going from a server that in the time slot you are playing in is high population to a lower pop server, you get a discounted or possibly free transfer. Maybe even retention of guild influence.

In reverse, you could be locked out entirely of going to a server with a high population in that time slot from a low pop server; or pay a higher transfer fee.

This will of course require accurate and up to date data mining tied into the transfer system. Could be a nightmare to implement.
—-
Another option could be to alter the supply system to make it harder to have a fully upgraded battlefield once your opposition has logged off, or make it so you can only have so many upgraded forts at one time, etc. Basically give the server that had people that aren’t on 24/7 a fighting chance once they do log on by making it harder to support a zerg logistically.
—-
Another option is scaling WvWvW queue caps; queue is capped to what the lowest in the trio can field at a given time. An incredibly draconian option though, and exploitable if you allow transfers to be too unrestricted/frequent.

Basically the point is, Anet will have to do something on their end. The players in general have already proven to be too shortsighted to level the server population on their own.

…then WvWvW will continue to devolve into unsatisfying lopsided crap like it has so far.

An outmanned buff hasn’t been cutting it. A scoring change won’t cut it, and goes against the stated philosophy that one player’s time isn’t more valuable than another player’s time. You are going to have to find some way to encourage the server populations to spread out some across the timezones instead of clumping up into the mega hordes they keep shortsightedly piling into now.

Your going to have to admit the average player isn’t very smart about pvp server balance and only wants to join the bandwagon winning team without realizing that if everyone piles onto the same server, there is no one to fight, thus no pvp.

I just hope someone in authority has actually realized this already. But just in case, I posted what should be obvious.

Have a nice day.

Marks don’t seem to trigger on Dragons either. Severely kittens a staff support build in those fights.

Konrad Curze.5130:

RashanDale.3609:

So, theres a new balance update and the necro is the only class that didnt receive anything?

I suppose ANet has realized the current of the state of the necro is so unreal, that they will be making a patch around it alone.

I can only hope. Getting tired of playing a conditionmancer/well build, not exactly the fast way to level, but the other options are borked enough I don’t want to bother.

Please fix this issue. It makes being an underdog server in WvW be even more brutal when a large portion of the enemy forces are invisible to you until you are at point blank range. It completely ruins the ability to scout and thus engage in asymmetrical warfare tactics when you cannot see accurately where the enemy is and their numbers.

Ditto on Sea of Sorrows.