soloing champions with closed eyes with my MM necro in soldier gear lol not all of corse but yeah some defensive stats worth it.
Aaaand what the point of soloing champions? It took lot of time and you always can run with train :/
Pride? A feeling of accomplishment? It may be shocking to realize, but some people don’t enjoy just faceroll zerging things all day! Running with the train is about the most boring thing imaginable. They need to randomize spawn times or something its getting way out of hand. But I digress! Apothecary gear works nice for a MM too, since you are likely using staff alot it beefs up staff2 to quite a huge bleed and like 300hp per tic regen for you and minions.
I think it is awesome that the mobs run to their buddies to try and revive them before they die, and you can’t just faceroll everything in a zerg without a second thought. Even if it means just a few extra seconds of effort. I do agree on the giant obnoxious finishers with banners and stuff, that seems silly outside of wvw and pvp. I mean its basically to rub it in peoples faces when you kill them, its not like the npcs can rage about it lol.
Flesh Golem has gotten better with the increased hp there’s no doubt, but to say it holds a candle to a fully traited ranger pet is stretching things a bit. I have both, and theres no way my flesh golem is easily tanking lvl 80 champions letting me solo them no problem like my drake/bear/devourer does. No way he’s going to burst down anyone in wvw like jaguar/raven. Is he better underwater? Oh wait flesh golem can’t go underwater =( The regen with signet/natural regen/troll unguent and some healing gear makes ranger pets almost invincible to anything but bosses, necromancer has nothing like that that comes close. Also, as has been pointed out, if he’s standing in a red circle or in the path of a big windup attack he’s toast, no way to call him out or reposition him =/
I’m not sure what you mean by saying flesh golem needs no traits or builds to perform well, there are lots of minion related talents one has to take, increase hp, increase damage, death nova, siphoning, remove conditions etc.
I’m really glad you’re enjoying your golem and yes he is a fine companion indeed, but the difference between it and a fully traited ranger pet is just night and day.
You can’t compare turrets to ranger pets. Minions and phantasms sure, but turrets are a joke. They didn’t even get included with the hp update last patch. They die if a stiff breeze hits them. Not just from champions or even veterans, regular trash mobs wipe them out in a few hits even fully traited, its ridiculous. So just think, things could always be worse
One of the devourers, can’t remember which, poisons off autoattacks and f2 does bleed, on top of also being included in the bleed trait with cats, sharks etc.
It already saves 4 pet names, 2 on land 2 in water, do you really switch them around that much? I mean sure you might have a pair for wvw or dungeons, but generally I keep the same 2 in place otherwise. Can always keep one of the swaps as your faithful named pet and use the other slot for trying stuff out. I can kind of see why they don’t do it for dozens and dozens of pets, I mean that’s alot of data to keep for a 3 second inconvenience to people once in awhile. I’d love for it to happen don’t get me wrong, the more convenient the better, I can just see why its not high on the priority list.
It’s the same with necromancer minions, the damage shows at around half of the pre-patch value. I’m not sure if its a tooltip error or they nerfed damage since they upped hp or what =/
I like that idea, they’ll never do it though. If you give players a way to min/max their damage they will do that 99% of the time, then talk down to anyone who would rather play more defensive or support. This game is getting ridiculous in the ‘zerker gear or gtfo’ mentality these days, I’m sure that’s not at all what the devs had in mind but I’m not sure what they can do about it now without drastic changes to healing power/toughness =/
Most abilities in GW2 count as AoE. So having my damage against pets/minions/turrets nerfed by 90% with no real single-target ability, to deal with them.
No thanks, no way to ever kill a pet/minion/turret/spirit unless you happen to be using the correct profession with the correct weapon. Then they still melt. And Engineer is certainly not one of those correct professions, all of our weapons are overwhelmingly aoe focussed.
Dont think anyone here is truely surprised they somehow forgot about turrets.
I don’t think anyone is asking for AoE reduction from normal cleave, hit 5 targets type abilities. It’s the huge red circles and poison circles and fire and massive unavoidable 1 hit ko boss attacks that are the problem. Regular player aoe of course wouldn’t count, but ranger and mesmer literally HAVE to have pets out whether they like it or not and necromancer and engineer have them as a main, heavily promoted and iconic build that caused most people to even want to play the class in the first place. And for anet to leave them totally screwed when facing attacks that must be dodged or evaded with nothing they can do about it no matter how skilled they are in a game based around the dodging and evasion of big attacks and aoe circles is just ridiculous.
The real marsh drakes like they were in beta. ‘Scaled’ drakes now. For god sakes Anet, at least change the pet icon so I don’t have to cry every time I see it thinking about how it’s supposed to be.
How could they have left out turrets from the pet health increase is beyond me. Maybe it was just some oversight because they use different code and they’ll fix it. Hopefully.
The ‘scaling’ is an absolute joke on everything except transfusion, that one is amazing. Vampiric, with a full set of exotic healing gear goes up…(drumroll) 5 points. Vampiric Master is a little better but only goes up 25 points. /sadpanda
The hp buff on pets and spirits is huge and very noticeable, if it doesn’t work in wvw though that sucks… the rest of the patch is extremely meh though.
we seriously need a UI that lets us see there health and lets us set them to defensive/aggressive modes.
No modes, they aren’t ranger pets, stop trying, (insert elitism about how only bad MMs want this), go play GW1s MM and come back to talk minion control, otherQQhere.
Minion UI to show health is a big QoL improvement to lessen some of the “bad” microing we have to do that actually hurts how you play the builds, without needing to directly buff anything.
And seriously stop asking for modes, we don’t need them, and it removes a lot of the counterplay they have. It would be 10x easier to make 1v1s hell on mobile builds with that, and they already have it pretty bad.
It really is your mission in life to dump on anyone who wants improvements made to minions. Who cares if they aren’t ranger pets, that prevents us from having a UI with their health on it too for the sake of clarity? Simply showing their health or having an attack/defend toggle isn’t their class mechanic, its having multiple commands, taming and the ability to switch between dozens of different pets to fit any situation or preference, with tons of traits and skills revolving around pets to further customize them. I’m pretty sure now that minions don’t aggro things anymore that we won’t get an attack/defend button, but I don’t see why a hp bar would be out of the question.
It was great and really added alot to the game and made it stand out from other mmos until your mentor bites it, after that it is boring drek with Trahearne that was just a complete and utter waste of time and lost every bit of its charm.
I used to play a game called Shadowbane that had a mechanic similar to retaliation on their Barbarian class. I made a high con Minotaur Barbwho had ridiculous amounts of health, and just left him out in dangerous places with that skill running constantly (with the help of a key macro). I would come back a couple hours later to find tons of dead rogue based characters around him =D
kitten I miss shadowbane, its a pity so many interesting and unique ideas turned out so poorly =/
All I want is the original marsh drake pet back…it still has the icon for the first model they used back in beta..the ‘scaled drakes’ now, crocodile looking things. If they would just put those back in I would be so freaking happy.
Ahh now that would be a great patch. A little over the top sure, but almost every other profession (sorry engineers and rangers) is already over the top so we’d fit right in then, woo!
You’d think staff 1 or one of the marks on a single target would get them to attack, but the melee ones dont act any better then than if it was cast on a group. And in your example, say you cast well of suffering and hit 5 things. It would be nice if they attacked something rather than nothing. There should be code for that…aoe=attack closest, or furthest, or whatever they want, but make it something. For the contingency plan in those situations to be ‘stand there’ seems a curious design choice don’t you think?
And I don’t want the minions buffed up in the hitpoint department necessarily, they should be able to be burst down of course, everything needs a counter…just something to make them usable in dungeons and wvw, aoe resistance or passive regen, something like that.
I realize I can walk up and stab something with a dagger and get them to attack, but why should you have to do that? 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.
And Bas I wasn’t even quoting you I’m not sure why you are getting so upset and acting like its a personal attack on you or something. I know the ‘lol omg fanboy(boi)!’ retort isn’t very constructive and I didnt mean it to come out that way but when you see someone fervently denying a problem that almost everyone else thinks is obvious it can be frustrating, because you want Anet to acknowledge and fix said problem. Again its not the end of the world, I’d rather they gave them some aoe resistance and/or regen if I had to choose, but might as well hope they fix everything right?
Honestly I’m not sure why we even bother anymore, Anet clearly doesn’t care what people say on their forums, every patch is mainly stuff no one asks for and nothing people want. Pets/minions/summons in general seem to be of little to no concern, I mean just look at the necro population its one of if not the lowest in the game, along with engineers who (coincidentally?) also have buggy, underwhelming summons. And hey thats fine its their game they can do what they want, I’m just glad its not a subscription game so people who enjoy playing pet classes that work can go do something else and check back in from time to time to see if there’s been any improvements. Its just a shame because the framework for this game is great and I really want it to be something I can stick with long term. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and sticking around because the rest of the game is just that good, but I really hope they do something about minions soon, its hard seeing your favored playstyle ignored and marginalized the way it has been so far. =/
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.
I can’t tell which one but at this point you’re either a) the biggest anet fanboy alive b) trolling everyone and getting a kick out of it or c) simply delusional.
Just because you may have found a pattern to why they don’t always work doesn’t change the fact that they don’t always work. When at least 1 in 3 times I initiate combat one or more minions stands around twiddling their thumbs for a few seconds at best, or most of the fight at worst, there is a problem. The ranged minions are fine they work 100% of the time, but the melee ones do not, especially flesh golem, and to suggest they are fine and working as intended is ridiculous.
There are ways you can get them to attack fairly reliably sure, but there shouldn’t be any steps you need to take in order to get your minions to attack, this isn’t the launch sequence of a freaking spaceship, as soon as you are in combat they should all attack something in range, period.
If they all had a 16s cooldown then it wouldn’t be a problem. If you are full MM spec and wurmy and golem are dead and you’re waiting almost a minute without your main source of damage then its a problem. If they’re supposed to be suicide bombers then let them do that. If they’re supposed to last awhile give us a way to keep them alive, thats all I want. We just seem to be stuck in between the two and it sucks. Engineers can even spec to babysit their turrets and heal them constantly if they want. Sure its not very efficient but at least theres an option for it, we have no realistic options at all to try to keep them alive.
I run necro regularly as my main and have used MM build quite frequently before any patch, after some patches, and as recently as yesterday. I can honestly say that they are still very buggy. Often my bone minions act more as cheerleaders watching the fight than actually participated (which sucks because I often blow them up and hate when they blow up too far away from the agro to score a hit).
It also does’t seem to make a big difference on where I am in the battle. I’ve run with dagger MH (so close melee), staff (far distance) and recently been running axe to test that out with new buffs (mid-range). My minions act about the same with all three of those weapons.
Staff is perhapst he worst weapon to use to begin a battle as MM. Dagger works, but there are reasons it’s not optimal for MM. I would go into more detail, but Bhawb has been working and testing out different weapons with Minions since I am unable to play regularly for awhile. He has also put together a very simple aggro guide on MM based on different things we have spoken of over the last few months.
They don’t have a bad ai. They just don’t respond the way you think they should. Remember they are single target utilities, not pets designed to follow your targeting so they respond differently.
Too bad staff is the only weapon you can even try to keep the little kittens alive with. And even with max healing power and enough regen from mark of blood to even out-heal the jagged horrors bleed out, they still die to anything strong =( Although it is fun to see all the little hamsters stampeding around until an aoe gets them.
The whole ‘they are a utility they’re supposed to not be very good’ thing might very well be true but Anet certainly misrepresented the class pre-release if thats the case. Every screenshot had necro surrounded by minions, every blurb talking about them was minions minions minions. They never said ‘Oh by the way, minions are situational at best and semi-useless at worst, they’re designed to be dead every 30 seconds once you are level 80 and are doing anything remotely challenging. If you like pets please don’t play this class.’
I find it ironic and hilarious that there are tons of people on the necro forums who want their minions to be better and want to be able to use them in more situations, and there are tons of people on the ranger forum who want to be able to go pet-less and stow them for damage buffs. They should have some kind of exchange program for us =D
I really wish I had your super-minions Bas. Flesh golem and shadow fiend can’t even survive the trash that cleaves in TA on story mode or the huge veteran karka that lay eggs let alone real dungeon bosses. How exactly do you manage to spread out your ranged minions anyway? I mean you can put wurm wherever but the other 2 stand right next to each other and both eat it at the same time. Usually a few seconds after all the melees have been cleaved to death =/. So at that point you have your flesh wurm still up, and the golem often has a sliver of health left so he gets in a few more whacks before he bites it too on the next aoe.
Its not even so much that they get one shot because their health is decent, its that there are so many things that do repeated constant damage. They get torn to shreds by cleaves and just stand there burning to ashes or dissolving in poison or getting thrashed by some boss spinning attack…you can see it coming and can do absolutely nothing about it. Thats my biggest problem, its infuriating being able to have absolutely no input after you first attack a target. No matter how good you are all you can do is watch them die in the most idiotic ways possible. And then be semi useless for the next 16-48 seconds.
The whole game of guild wars 2 is designed around dodging big hits and staying out of red circles, and they can’t do either. I honestly don’t know how they could even be designed in such a flawed way.
You can kite alot of bosses and champions using it without them being snared, I know its saved my bacon a few times being able to outrun stuff while pet and others hacked away at it. Plus once you use it for awhile you just feel like a turtle without it, and honestly, if you’re a BM build what other utilities are you going to use? The shouts have huge cd and you’re probably already running the signet of the wild/stone. So I guess you could throw in a random trap or something for your last one but without being specd for them it wouldn’t make much difference. All depends on your gear and spec I suppose.
I would weep for joy if they actually put in a dmg cap or a passive aoe dmg reduction, something, ANYTHING to help the little kittens not die instantly to any tough encounter.
Now that I agree with, now we are on the same page. In previous games, Minions were considered a core mechanic to Necro’s. You made a Necromancer/warlock you got a pet who tanked damage. They were a core mechanic. Anet did not make them a core mechanic simply a utility tool you can use. DeathShroud is our core mechanic.
Do I think Flesh Golem and Shadow fiend need a bump in aoe/cleave avoidance? Absolutely, I would love it. The issue is how that would affect pvp and tournaments where the Golem could viably turn into a bunker.
We have the shortest cd in the game. The summoning time is what I don’t like. 24 seconds between summoning a minion is fine. I bring blood, bone fiend, bone minion, Flesh Golem, and Flesh Wurm, that’s 3 ranged that I post at different spots, 1 melee, and 1 guy I just use to blow up every 16 seconds.
As a side note, when your minions are all dead you lose very little toughness and the consistent healing, but not really a lot of damage. We are essentially the same damage as Well guys when their wells are on cd, and DS guys when they aren’t in DS. There is a drop off, but it’s no greater than the other builds see.
The difference is those wells/condition build types have a ton more power/cond dmg/precision/crit etc. MM focusing on toughness and healing has pretty terrible weapon skill damage. I don’t mind that I can’t keep the whole minion army up 24/7 that would be unrealistic. But there needs to be some kind of change to allow you to help your poor minions. Make spectral wall into a dome or have bigger range so we could plop it down on flesh golem before a big attack, add some kind of ‘minions evade when you dodge’ trait, or my personal favorite and this would solve a ton of the issues: make blood fiend’s heals affect itself and all other pets as well as you.
In random pve soloing and 1v1 or small scale pvp minions are fine, if thats what he uses them for primarily no wonder he thinks they are so good. Its champions/boss fights and large scale situations that their performance disappoints me in so greatly.
The only major issue that we currently have is the DS UI issue. That’s the only major problem Necro’s have.
Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough
And minion survivability. They could have the best AI in the world and it doesnt help if they’re all dead 90% of the time every boss fight and any wvw skirmish of more than 2 or 3 people.
This is just blatant exaggeration. That’s like me claiming wells are complete crap because if you drop them and the boss doesn’t step on it youa re completely useless 90 percent of the time.
Come on! Minons die, wells, miss, corruption skills have limites, spectral skills are specialized, and signets are pretty weak. Look at it context and quit with the blatant exaggeration. If your minions are dead 90 percent of the time in a boss fight learn to use minions better. You have 3 ranged. If you aren’t an idiot you can place them so they don’t all die at the same time. Bone Minions are supposed to die. Bone fiends are not meant to tank bosses. Stop acting like it’s a game breaking issue.
They are freaking minions. They die, it doesn’t prevent you from playing, you can still do as much damage as a conditino mancer who brought epidemic to a boss fight. You can still wipe out players in pvp.
Yes, MM has issues in WVWVW where large aoe zergs just mow things down. Every pet class has the same issues. That doesn’t mean they aren’t viable.
Sure I was slightly exaggerating but not that much. I guess we just have differing expectations of what it is to be a necromancer. Every mmo since the dawn of time has given them strong, useful pets. If we’re meant to just chuck minions at a target and watch them die in 3 seconds then so be it, but then lower the cooldowns on them. Or at least beef up the flesh golem, if you take all minion traits he is your main source of damage and usually the first to die to a boss because of melee based cleaves and spins and aoes and then you are useless. Its not the same as saying oh your wells or condition utilities are on CD, you have huge power or cond. dmg and your weapon skills are still useful then. If you are a MM you probably have lots of healing and toughness you are pretty useless if all your minions are dead most of the time.
I just don’t understand how you can lump minions in with clones and thieves guild and stuff, most people who make a necromancer make it for pets. But I suppose thats how Anet sees it, they are junk second tier utility and not meant to be your main power source like ranger pets. =/
That’s not a core issue. That’s a utility build issue. Core issues are issues at the heart of the class that affect every single build. Since the utility pet ai is a game wide issue that affects mutliple classes it seems ridiculous to keep bringing it up as a Necro Core issue.
To top it off, they have been gradually fixing it with each patch. It’s better now than a month ago and it was better a month ago than it was at launch. I am speaking from hundreds of hours of Minion play. It’s not as bad as it is being painted.
“Not that bad” isn’t good enough. Rangers dont have that problem, if you can’t design an AI that functions properly all the time then let players tell the kitten things when to attack and retreat, problem solved. GW2 is supposed to be so advanced and the next evolution of mmos and all that, when games 10 years older have far better AI in place for pets. Its inexcusable.
The only major issue that we currently have is the DS UI issue. That’s the only major problem Necro’s have.
Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough
And minion survivability. They could have the best AI in the world and it doesnt help if they’re all dead 90% of the time every boss fight and any wvw skirmish of more than 2 or 3 people.
This is par for the course. The Devs are very out of touch when it comes to ranger. Pets are still utterly broken. Necros got a TON of love, and even the overpowered theif and warrior classes got significant buffs. My build got a WvW nerf for the guard skill which was our only “cool” or “special” thing we could do in WvW (while mesmer clones still get to pop up on walls). None of the other patch notes affect any ranger playing a reasonable build.
Necro has a long list but most of it doesn’t really help. Woo heals from the minion talents went up..too bad all the minions will still be dead most of the time in any kind of tough fight against a champion or boss or in wvw if anything even glances in their general direction…the times when you’d actually NEED heals. Its unbelievable that of all the classes guardians are the only ones that get actual buffs to their summons survivability and not rangers or necros T_T
Sigh. I mean these are welcome improvements and all but..most of the stuff just affects jagged horrors, and the bit of extra healing you can get from pets doesn’t really matter because they’re all still kittening dead from one big windup attack or a few aoes that we still have no way whatsoever of making them avoid. Was really hoping for some kind of survivability increase for minions…bleh.
I wouldn’t care what was there if the kittening passion flowers would have more than a 1 in 100000000000000000 drop rate. I’ve farmed every node there almost every day since it was released and have gotten…5 flowers. Ever. And you need something like 500 of them to complete a set of apothecary jewelry, ugh. Why punish one stat combo and have the mats and finished products cost 5x as much as every other stat combo its ridiculous.
Yeah there is no comparison. Ranger pets can vary widely..if you take a cat or bird and have no pet related talents that pet will go splat just as fast as flesh golem. But if you have a devourer or bear or something and are fully beastmaster spec’d then it can tank packs of normal mobs, veterans with ease and not even lose health thanks to their various passive regens, and even some champions fairly handily.
Flesh golem won’t tank anything, if you so much as sneeze on the mob it will attack you over him it seems. Not to mention if its a veteran the poor guy drops like a rock. But if you’re trying to mine a node or something or run through an area quickly you can send him in to attract attention while you do your thing. Still the toughest of our minions but thats like saying the thickest piece of paper =/
The earth elemental like Bhawb said is a good tank but very limited by its duration and cooldown.
It still seems rather ridiculous to even lump in making pets and especially minions actually useful and functional with ‘lol2greatswordsplz!’ It’s not even in the same ballpark. If they wanted to dodge the question they could have done it alot more tactfully.
Wow, just wow. How can they compare minions and pets being suboptimal and out and out useless in many situations with warriors wanting lol2greatswordsplz! My enthusiasm for anet is drastically waning these days.
If you don’t have much in BM spiders are good too, because even with BM they’ll do crap damage but that long immobilize on such a short cooldown is fantastic, and extra poison fields are always helpful. Devourers seem much better with lots of BM points, they take quite a beating and do respectable damage.
I always thought this was pretty ridiculous as well. Polar bears are fine, they swim underwater all the time, but that should be it. The rest of them are just weird and unnatural. Nothing says every pet in a group type has to be the same, look at the lynx its in cat family but land only.
Southsun Island. Karka. The normal ones. They do a ranged multi attack as their opener that is cake to dodge. You will get 33% minimum if you time it right. Do a dodge forward and a dodge backward through the whole thing. 3 mobs and you’re done with the daily. Thank me later.
Yeah I was going to suggest that one too, you get it super fast and its guaranteed dodges. Of course that doesnt help the lower level players. Find some ettin or abomination or something with a big, easy to spot wind-up attack? Or some drakes, their breath attacks are easy to see coming and always get an evade.
Dungeons solid? If by solid you mean they die nearly instantly even to random trash, let alone bosses, then I suppose so. I want so much for them to be good in dungeons but right now they aren’t. Anything with an aoe or cleave, so…75% of most dungeons…is going to wipe them out, even if you take every minion trait and have full healing gear and keep mark of blood on them constantly. And be prepared for lots of people to complain about them in groups too, accusing them of pulling adds (even if it wasn’t them), of messing up boss abilities to the group’s detriment(which you have no control over), being a waste of space, etc. I just wish an mmo could design some pet classes to not be the red headed step child for once. Sigh.
You have to think about the difference in hitpoint pools too. Probably 1/3 of the time all those heals aren’t going to be affecting you because you’re in DS so that cuts the amount. That 20k healing for elementalist is going to heal them to full almost twice over, likely triggering all kinds of ‘when hp reach x% this happens’ kind of traits. Whereas our 27k, maybe 18 of which actually affects us after you factor in time in DS, wouldn’t heal most necromancers up even once. Its completely different, Ele is far far far more efficient with the heals, with better cooldowns usually. The easiest way to fix the imbalance would be to simply make all the necro and pet (especially blood fiend) siphons scale with healing power, I can’t figure out why they won’t do this. If we take all those traits our damage isnt going to be great anyway, so why not let them help us survive to be the attrition class we’re supposed to be.
Yes please. Necromancer minions, turrets, elementals, etc too. Its a joke that so many playstyles are rendered completely useless any time there is tough content like dungeons, wvw, champions, bosses etc. No one else has this problem except pet classes, sure not all builds are optimal or well suited for all situations, but no other type of build is made utterly worthless for all difficult content.
You can always not put any traits toward your pet if you want, to try and maximize your own damage…but as already stated, you might as well play a bow warrior or thief instead. Anet has stated that pets are factored into the class to be present 24/7 and be a good portion of our dps…you could be the best ranger on the face of the earth but if you’re not using your pet you won’t be as good as a decent player of another similar class, by design. A minimal pet build is fairly common, just using bears or spiders, real fire and forget type of pets that will help a bit and last awhile with no real effort or investment on your part, but to try to play your ranger with no input from your pet whatsoever just wouldn’t make any sense.
While buffs to GS would be nice, maybe its meant to be more of a power weapon? I know it does have a bleed skill but every weapon can’t have everything. If that was the case let’s get some bleeds on longbow too The spirits definitely need a huge boost in hp/toughness, and why not give them some minor damage pulse within their radius of effect. Either that or make them immune to damage because as you said, the times when you’d actually need them, ie dungeons, champions, boss fights and wvw zergs, they implode if anything so much as glances in their general direction. That’s a problem with all summons except full BM ranger pets though, I sincerely wish anet would give spirits, spirit weapons, necro minions, thieves guild, turrets, etc some kind of blanket aoe damage reduction, as it is they are all utterly useless in almost any situation except casual soloing and 1v1 fights. Core, class defining abilities shouldn’t turn to worthless garbage when the going gets tough, that’s when they should shine.
It would be a nice bonus but hopefully minions will get ai and survivability increases at some point so they are good for something other than suicide bombers =/
Minions are fine for leveling and 1v1 encounters but thats about it. When the going gets tough, your pets get…dead. Instantly. Only flesh wurm is useful in dungeons when you can prop him up on a ledge somewhere out of the way, the rest of them get smoked in poison/fire/circles/boss cleaves/wvw zerg aoes/a stiff breeze from any mob veteran or tougher. Its infuriating, they need some kind of aoe resistance and a way to heal them outside of staff 2 and life transfer once every 40 seconds or whatever. I think a great way to do it would be to make the blood fiend’s heal affect himself and all the other minions along with you. That would ramp up survivability considerably. Then just some kind of blanket aoe reduction for all summons/minions/spirit weapons/etc and we’d be good to go.
