Some small ideas I’d suggest. Comments? Other specific changes?
1. Change Reanimator (Death Magic’s Adept minor trait) to heal your minions for a percentage of Life Force you gain. Even if minion AI were exceptional — which it’s not — you need the option in certain encounters to be minionless and choosing any traits in the Death Magic trait line means you can never do this. This change would still add a bit of oomph to minions, if you have them out, but would have no effect if you were minion-less. It even fits with the trait name: you’re reanimating your minions which otherwise don’t regenerate health.
2. Change Deathly Invigoration (Blood Magic IX) so that it is also a blast finisher (no damage) in addition to the heal. We seem to lack blast finishers, and it would be a great reason to dip into DS.
3. When you enter Death Shroud, have it work more like other Elites and form changes: lock out the top five skill slots, swap the bottom five utility slots, and swap the health and life force meters so that the ball is green and shows life force while the horizontal bar is red and shows health. If conditions/boons affect you in Death Shroud (I’m not sure, personally), move them to the appropriate place: by the ball if they affect you in Death Shroud form, by the horizontal bar if they affect you once you leave. Also, change the trim around the life ball, so even a red-green colorblind person can tell that it’s now life force and not health.
That way, you can watch cooldown timers, conditions/boons, etc, and it would be more consistent with other forms. I imagine that at some point Death Shroud was unaffected by boons/conditions, and since health cannot change in Death Shroud (either increase or decrease), it made sense to hide all those details. But it no longer makes sense.
4. Have Spectral Recall be a blast finisher and maybe also apply a brief cripple — at the point the Recall is used not at the point you return to.
5. Fix minion AI. It’s easy for us to suggest magic “make it work”, but I’ll try to give an example of specific rules.
First, GW2 should track what targets (within some radius) you have attacked (done something that would have thrown you into combat if you weren’t already), that have attacked you, and that have attacked your minion within the last X seconds.
If you target a player/mob and attack and the minion is not already attacking something else, the minion should attack that target until that target is dead (down?) or would cause the minion to pursue beyond leashing range from you.
If the minion does not have LOS or a path to this target, it should teleport to you (who evidently have an LOS) and try to get LOS or a path. If the minion still cannot get LOS or a path to the original target, it should try with your current target (if that target has attacked or been attacked). If it cannot get LOS or a path to this current target, it should attack the nearest target that has attacked or been attacked and is still in combat.
If the minion cannot attack any other valid target(or there are no valid targets) but is itself being attacked, it should attack the strongest of its attackers.
If you attack multiple targets (e.g. AoE or a bouncing attack) but one is your current target, the minion should go after that target in particular. If you attack multiple targets without having a specific target selected your minion should attack the closest one to you.
If the minion is not already attacking something and you are attacked, the minion should attack the closest of your attackers. If you move out of the minion’s leashing range, the pet should follow you until it is adjacent to you, ignoring attacks on itself if necessary. (Even if it dies in the process. You have to manage your minions at least a little bit.)
A minion should never attack a target that is not already in combat. A minion should never attack a target that you have not attacked or that has not attacked you or itself. A target should try to path in such a way that it does not aggro a mob that is not in combat. (Given some limitation, like the path should not be more than 20% longer than the most direct path.) After its target is dead, a minion should return by the most direct path to you before attacking anything else. If it cannot find a path to you that is within its leashing range, it should teleport to you.
(It really is complicated to specify, and there are still issues like how to distinguish a situation where you’re running through an area and want to ignore everything and keep running and have your minion do the same. Also possible exploits of sending a minion to attack at almost leashing range, then stepping out of leashing range at a particular moment, etc.)
