Guild Wars 2

Nope. Seems ok to me.

First, you don’t say what these builds are for: PVE,PvP or WvW?

One misleading thing on that calculator is that it acts as if the Dark Armor trait is active. So, the toughness on the Power build is really only 1375 when not channeling.

I prefer Epidemic over the WoS, but that’s just my personal choice.

The second build is interesting; hard to tell how effective it would be in practice.

pierwola.9602:

• Death Shroud
  I would like to see recharge time(small icons above the LF) on DS skills before i transform

This would be very, very nice to have….for all modes, not just wvwvw. Having hidden recharge times is both annoying and a tactical disadvantage.

This is what I’ve been playing with in PVE the last few days. It’s not a full DS-centric build, with only 20pts in SR, but still hits pretty well, by leveraging Close to Death + Infiltration Runes for 30% damage increase for enemies under 50% health. Ogre runes would be another possible choice.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|6.1g.h2|b.1k.h2.8.1g.h1|1k.71k.1k.71k.1k.71k.1k.71k.1k.71k.1k.a4|1n.61.1n.61.1n.61.1n.67.1n.67.1c.67|u37c.0.k25.0.k2a|2e.1|3r.3u.3x.44.0|e

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

But why will I waste precision/critical damage just for 1 skill ?

But its not just that one skill. Staff1 and DS1 certainly benefit, as do the staff marks.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Should I go for Carrion ? What about Rapid ?

Adding 100 CondDmg adds only 5 dmg to each stack of bleed, so if you are primarily a power build, adding in some Carrion is not really helping you much. You are better off to leverage your power by addding precision/crit. Rabid isn’t really a good choice for a dagger build since it is a power weapon.

I am a fan of healing power for the regeneration. This can be used to help keep your minions alive longer. But of course, this comes at the cost of some other stat.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

When all my minions die via AOE , I will need toughness .

Yes, but how much? In your case you have both very high health and toughness. Both of these help to add survivability, but there is also a third way to increase survivability: kill the enemy quicker – it tends to reduce their DPS to zero.

This is where the recommendations come in to leverage your power by adding crit chance & crit dmg. But its a matter of personal taste as to where you feel comfortable in terms of balance between DPS vs tankiness.

Maybe this mix of your soldier armor with berzerker weapons/trinkets/orbs will be a possibility:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAW4djEal61aua07JCJFRjaTP4G46Gki3LNA-jAyAYLioZCCMJaIaZviox2GKiGreBTVSEV7NKiWtMA6jB-e

Bhawb.7408:

Easy to say, but we have absolutely no idea how much access we get to burning. An extreme example is they give us a trait that has a 1% chance to apply burning for 1s whenever we apply a condition. I think we could all agree this burning would be arguably more useless than Reanimator. This is just to show that Burning itself on a Necro is not OP, it all comes down to the how and how much.

This exactly. Based on previous necro changes, I’m sadly inclined to believe:
1) it will be a small amount of burning
2) it will be on an inconveniently located trait
3) it will break some other skill

That said, I’d be glad to be proved wrong.

Go into the water.

I think you’ll find level 80 PVE more interesting (i.e., challenging) than your current level content. Mostly I just have fun getting myself into trouble by wading into many more mobs than I should, multiple vets, champions, etc. I agree with spoj, we just don’t hit nearly as hard as other classes, but then again, it seems that would make it all the more boring.

As for axe, no, it doesn’t get much better. Axe Training grandmaster trait helps, but I don’t care for axe’s weak #1 skill and the 600 range. On the other hand, Nemesis just posted a video about a huge Ghastly Claws dmg number. But in general PVE, I find axe tedious, clumsy and unsatisfying.

Zindrix.1750:

So my question is this: which utilities should I be using? Are there skills more beneficial than the damage wells? Are there any specific situations where a skill combination is really effective?.

For almost all PVE I strongly prefer (I’m scepter/dagger and staff):
-Blood Is Power
-Epidemic
-Locust Signet

BiP followed by Epidemic is a very strong AoE and unlike wells, it doesn’t require the mobs to sit in a fixed circle. Epidemic also lets me leverage conditions placed on a mob by other players. BiP also has a notably lower cooldown than wells.

I rarely/never use the active on Locust signet, I just use the passive for the speed buff.

For single-target, mostly stationary bosses (e.g., Nageling giant):
I’ll switch Epidemic/Locust to Corrosive Poison Cloud and Radiation Field (I’m Asuran), and maybe BiP to Flesh Wurm or a well.

I’m currently using a 20/0/25/0/25 build with staff and scepter/dagger that I’m pretty happy with (I just PVE). The DM and SR minors at 25 are pretty good. It mixes cleric, carrion, and other stats in a non-minmaxed kind of build. I’m sure some be appalled at it.

It came about as a variation on my Vengeful Cleric build in my sig. I’m at work now, but I’ll post the whole thing tonite when I get home.

Edit: here is the build….I’m still somewhat undecided between carrion or berzerker for the weapons. Yes, the crit chance is low, but with 25 in SR I’d kinda like to use the 25% crit dmg, and would use sigil of perception instead of bloodlust. Also, I might try Adventurer runes instead of Undead. In any case, its quite sturdy and the high healing power gives alot of regen, which raised the EHP:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|6.1h.h2|b.1h.h2.8.1h.h4|1k.719.1k.719.1k.719.1k.719.1k.719.1k.719|1k.62.1k.62.1k.62.1k.62.1k.62.8c.62|k57.0.p25.0.p2a|2i.1|3r.3u.3x.44.4f|e

Look on the TP for rare-level “Strong Conjurer” armor. It comes in several stat combinations, including Rabid (CondDmg/Prec/Tough).

For the Orr temple Rabid karma armor, see:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats#Karma

If the trait replaces Greater Marks (and Greater Marks is either made default or added into Staff Mastery) I’d be happy with access to burning.

After the patch has anyone noticed if minions are now targets for Focus4 bounces?

Apparently, mesmer clones and engineer turrets are bounce targets! Thread in the bug forum:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Clones-turrets-are-now-Bounce-able-targets

ROFL!! Love the attachment!

I think Rampager is likely too squishy. Even in PVE I get knocked around alot in Orr.

FWIW, here is a Rampager build I’ve been theorycrafting, which has a decent mix of Power, Crit and Condition Dmg, along with some Toughness and 30 in SR to mitigate damage:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|b.1o.h2.8.1o.h5|6.1o.h2|1o.7m.1o.7m.1o.7m.1o.7m.1o.7m.1o.7m|1o.61.1o.61.1o.61.1o.61.1o.61.1c.61|0.k27.k25.0.u2ac|2m.1|3r.3u.3x.44.4f|e

At least it could kill a weapons rack, compared to Rabid. But even with Dolyak runes, EHP of 24k is pretty low. (By comparison, the build in my sig has 34k EHP plus a ton of regeneration.)

To the OPs second question: ideally, you’d stack both CondDmg & CondDur. But I find just having some CondDur (via the Spite traitline), while not ideal, is ok in a cond/power build (at least for PVE).

Kiriakulos.1690:

I don’t think the skills are powerful enough to warrant a self-inflicted condition as balance.
If the conditions are a 0 sum though I really question how hurting yourself can be considered 0 sum.
Condition removal/transfer is supposed to be counters to enemies, not to ourselves.

I think this is just another example of how Necros were implemented as designed without much play-testing to see if the bloody design worked.

Agreed. There’s no good reason we should be burdened with wasting our condition removal on our own skills! Getting rid of the self-inflicted conditions on these skills would be a small start toward de-gimping the necro profession.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

Thank you!!

Silver.4798:

I use scepter/dagger with axe/focus. Currently I do sceptor 2 (bleed and cripple) sceptor 5, sceptor 4, blood is power, switch to axe/focus, 4,5, epidemic, 2.

I usually use dagger4 after BiP and Epidemic. That way, you can use dagger4 to transfer the BiP self-bleed and the Epidemic self-vuln to the targets.

Sometimes its better to lead with dagger5 instead of scepter2, since dagger5 has a fairly small AOE radius and its possible for the target to move out of its range, even when crippled.

I wouldn’t get too hung up on having a fixed rotation, though. Necro is somewhat more like the classic John f-in Madden:
http://azeroth.metblogs.com/2009/10/01/the-great-flowchart-of-feral-dps/

Here’s one which would be very aggressive (i.e., very glassy):
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|6.1g.a7|8.1g.a7.d.1g.h4|1g.a4.1g.a4.1g.a4.1g.a4.1g.a4.1g.a4|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67|u379.0.u23a.a3.0|39.1|3s.3y.3z.41.4g|e

Personally, I prefer a more conservative build – see the one in my signature – which could be used for an MM build just by adjusting the traits to the same as in the above link.

There’s quite a wide bit of variation possible, even just within MM builds.

It seems since the last patch that its been worse; that Life Leech isn’t nearly as effective as it used to be and I also notice my health falls faster than before.

Necros are very good at PVE farming, have many viable builds, and are designed to be able to facetank mobs despite being a light armor profession.

At level 8, I recommend using primarily scepter/dagger. That has 900 range, so stay at a distance and keep kiting them. Get Consume Conditions for healing, Blood is Power for a major bleed and Epidemic to spread it around (unless you are going for a minion master, in which case, of course, you go for your minion skill instead).

The necro is an attrition class, according to ANet. So we are designed to NOT have high burst damage. At high-levels, this mostly works out ok, but it can make things seem to go slow and feel weak at those very early levels.

I agree that vitality/toughness is a good way to go early on, to compensate for the slower damage rate.

Thucydides.8510:

The in-game description of Death Shroud tells you: “Entering this form removes other spectral effects.” The “Enter Grenth’s Domain” debuff necessary to kill shades counts as a spectral effect for DS purposes.

You can use this to your advantage by avoiding the insta-downed on 25 stacks of debuff that can surprise unwary shade-fighters.

These are two different things: “Enter Grenth’s Domain” buff (needed to kill shades), and the Corruption debuff (which stacks to 25 for the instakill).

As this thread points out, going into DS causes loss of the buff, but iirc it does not cause loss of the debuff.

Are you sure you lose the stacks of the debuff as well by going into DS?

Do you have the trait “Flesh of the Master”? That adds 50% more health to the minions.

And all along, I thought I was just imagining that I was losing the buff! Ugh, this does need to get fixed.

I don’t know of any specific leveling guides, but this one is pretty good for a condition necromancer:
http://lopezirl.com/2012/12/19/a-condition-necromancers-guide-to-pve/

There are also the video tutorials by Nemesis stickied at the top of the forum.

Because there are so many ways to spec and to level a necro, there isn’t one answer to your question. There are conditionmancers, powermancers, minionmancers, wellmancers, spectralmancers, etc. Once you get a feel for what weapons you want to use, and whether you want to use minions or not, etc., then it will be possible to provide more specific help on a build and leveling.

I definitely prefer the axe animation on my Asura necro over my Charr necro, especially axe1. With the the Asura, you spin around when performing axe1. Axe2 is kinda dumb on both, but at least on the Asura, the glow animation is proportionally larger than on the Charr.

IronPlushy.4256:

Why would I want a build that is mind numbing and simple?

Well, it’s not entirely simple and mind-numbing; you still need monitoring of your minions health, positioning, and CDs. But MM is good for faster leveling, if this is your nth character leveling to 80, and it is good for soloing champions rather than waiting for others to show up, and also for generally getting yourself into situations you might not otherwise.

But otherwise, I don’t find MM my preferred playstyle. I dunno, maybe I just don’t want to share the kill credit with a bunch of misshapen, mindless critters.

These guides will help you, I think:
http://lopezirl.com/

Also, see Nemesis’ tutorial videos in the stickied thread at the top of the forum. He goes into great detail explaining the roles of the traits and skills for his different builds.

Silver.4798:

I don’t mean to be snarky, but telling people “ur doing it wrong” and leaving it at that is… less than helpful, to put it bluntly.

My problem is this at the level I’m in:

Lets say I encounter 3 nightmare court targets with bows, all spaced out (I can only get one of them at a time in my AoE skills) These guys start their rapidfire and knockback annoyance, I used up both my dodges and my heal and then take some more damage. Now I’m at 10% health, and I can’t really run away (I’m well within their shooting range so running away is futile).

Now what do I do? Deathshroud? That will only soak up some damage for a few seconds before I’m back to exactly where I was before, my health still at 10% and maybe one more dodge, my heal still 10-12s or so away. Best I can do here (with my novice skills and shaky knowledge of the necro class) is to do as much damage to one target as possible, get downed, and try to take him down while being downed to get back a bit more health and my heal off of cooldown. This works maybe 10% of the time, the other 90% I just die.

More to the point, the downed necro skills… I don’t get it, is there an effective way to use them?

1) With the 3 ranged attackers, you really can’t do much other than what you mentioned. Necro is an attrition class, it just isn’t a warrior that can chop them down 1-by-1 fast enough to avoid being killed in the meantime, especially at low-levels. Dagger MH helps, but even that’s not always enough. Once you are higher level and more geared, though, necros are pretty darn tanky, especially for a light armor profession. So, you may just need to avoid those situations

2) For downed, target an enemy low on health and use #1 and 2&3 when they are off of CD. If you can get 10 pts in Spite, taking Death’s Embrace is really pretty potent for rallying. But at your level, those 10pts may be better spent elsewhere.

Silver.4798:

This happened to me too, I’m currently leveling my necro and levels 1-15 human zone I breezed through dying only once because of a dumb mistake on my part.

But then I went to the Sylvari starter zone to get some SPs to unlock blood is power, and vs the nightmare court’s rapid fire bows, goodlord it was night and day. They can bring my HP down so quickly! I don’t know if necro’s have access to vigor or not but I can only dodge x2 and have to wait an eternity for it to come off of cooldown, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to mitigate the damage minus going to death shroud (which is a very short reprieve, then I die).

Does necros have a “Oh Crap!!!” button when they are very low health and need to do some crisis management? Esp at lower levels (I’m currently level 23), but also at higher levels?

EDIT: I’m attempting to run a condi/power hybrid build with epidemic blood is power and eventually spectral walk as my utility slots, sceptor/dagger and axe/focus skill set. When things aren’t swarming me or rapid firing, my necro does great. When there is a ton of damage coming my way, I just don’t know how I’m supposed to manage those. I main a thief so I’m used to having some extra dodges, and I also have a level 80 guard who gets vigor on crit, so I guess I’m not used to any other defense besides dodge

- No access to vigor via traits or skills.

- Our “Oh crap” is Deathshroud, to soak up the damage. However, using it ONLY this way is a bad habit, and later on you’ll see it is more effective in situations (e.g., while your BiP is on CD, why not go into DS and siphon some enemy health!)

-At higher levels, Plague elite doubles your health and gives you some time for things to come off of CD.

-Use DS#3 and Staff#5 Fears to interrupt the enemy.

-At low-levels as a necro, I kite ALOT, and prefer Vitality gear and traits, just to give my health some more breathing room.

-Use Consume Conditions for a heal skill.

Cempa.5619:

Thor Rising.7850:

There is a build that relies completely on the PVT stats to grab massive amounts of durability. You basically have 0 crit chance or crit damage but you will still hit extremely high by using Superior Sharpening Stone ( I think thats the one, though I might be wrong) which gives you power equal to a percentage of your toughness and vitality.

This build is extremely tanky but still hits pretty high, at least from what I’ve heard about it. I personally play conditionmancer, but am looking into getting the PVT gear for this setup. The gear isn’t very hard to obtain either as AC exp rewards have PVT gear.

any more info? link?

I think Thor means the Juggermancer:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Juggermancer-Final-Blog-Link/first

Take a look at the cleric build in my signature. I’ve been quite happy with it for PVE. It has high regen, good healing on revive, good survivability and yet is strong enough that I run it all the time and likely won’t go back to a condition build. Axe/focus would work well with this, too.

Not the ultimate healer, perhaps, but something to give you some ideas. See also Nemesis’ “I will bring you back” build (I think that was the name of it.)

Copied from my post in another thread:

How about a condition that slowed the target’s attack speed (i.e., essentially the opposite of Quickness)? The result is that it drops the attackers overall DPS, and would be effective for pve/pvp/wvw. Call it “Melancholy”. Stack Melancholy with Weakness and the target’s DPS would really suffer, so balance would be somewhat tricky.

I like the OP’s idea, but unfortunately I think it would be almost completely useless in PVE, since many mobs are ranged, and melee ones would need to be kited endlessly, which is no good for your DPS, especially dagger MH users.

How about a condition that slowed the target’s attack speed (i.e., essentially the opposite of Quickness)? The result is that it drops the attackers overall DPS, and would be effective for pve/pvp/wvw. Call it “Melancholy”. Stack Melancholy with Weakness and the target’s DPS would really suffer, so balance would be somewhat tricky.

Roe.3679:

What did everyone expect?

They flat out told us the changes would be to the corruption skills, signet Passives and minion health and to some extent the AI.

They are already adding a 5th DS skill which will be a buff no matter what. They are looking at traits and hopefully looking more at the signets. I mean the SOTG was just posted a week ago… You didn’t all expect improved marks just since then, right? The only thing I see worth complaining about is a possible lack of a fix to downed HP.

The class as a whole got stronger, so be thankful nothing was taken away. There is always next month and the month after and things overall have gotten better for the Necro over time since launch.

Agree with this I do. We knew there wasn’t going to be much in there, and at least it was positive stuff (unlike the ele’s).

I think they said in SOTG that next month would be mainly bug fixes, so hopefully minion AI will be near the top of that list.

Kitedyou.1720:

Another question…does closer to death affect pet damage too??

I’ve not tested it, but I’m pretty confident it does not. I think the only thing that will help pet damage (besides Training of the Master trait) is vulnerability on the target.

Weakening Shroud (the trait) is pbaoe, whereas Enfeebling Blood (the skill) is ground-targetable.

I think its a fair point. They could replace the animation with a deathshroud-like puff of smoke from which the minions instantly appear.

Conditionmancers are viable. Their biggest limitations are:
1) Low power means they are very slow destroying physical structures which are only affected by direct damage
2) There is a 25-stack limit per condition on a target, so in a group event, it is common to hit that limit, especially with bleeds, in which case your additional bleed ability is somewhat wasted.

You do not need to use minions. Minionmancers are viable for PVE, but its not required you be one.

Consume Conditions is the best heal, unless you are a minionmancer or using Well of Blood in a group setting.

Signet of Spite is pretty weak, due to its long cooldown time. With a scepter, you’ll stack several conditions for use with FoC.

khelavaster.8724:

I have a lot of karma to spend and i want to buy an exotic set. Im thinking Rubicon for the precision and condition but im not nerd enough to figure out what the best stats & set are for me. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I think it’s going to depend a lot on how you plan to utilize the stats, especially in conjunction with traits. For example, how will precision help your build? This armor has no Power or Crit Dmg; do you have traits or sigils that need to proc off of crit? What trinkets/upgrades are you planning to use in conjunction with this armor to generate a viable amount of crit chance?

In short, you need to consider the whole build, so supply us with your planned traits, trinkets, sigils, runes, etc. Asking for armor recommendations requires knowing all the other pieces to the puzzle.

@Yendorion, I’m wondering if your use of Precision (49%) and CritDmg (16%) is worth the investment in those stats. From what I see, you’ll get Barbed Precision, Vampiric Precision and Sigil of Blood, but those help you and are not support for your team. You also have fairly low Power in addition to low crit dmg% so it doesn’t seem that crits will hit very hard, and your Toughness is kinda low.

Just what comes to mind when I look at it.

I like the mace idea. A nasty spiked mace would fit a necro nicely.

I just don’t see greatsword as necro-ey. Besides, if we got a greatsword, you know we’d end up with one of the skills being called Hundred Bleeds, which would be 75 2-sec bleeds (25 on up to three targets) and the last 25 on us, plus a 3 sec self-daze because we’d get dizzy from spinning around.

Mastruq.2463:

I’d love if the open world wasnt so faceroll boring.

Imo they should introduce whole areas in the maps that more difficult to tackle to provide content for people that still enjoy a good challenge instead of the optimal path to their points. GW1 had the higher difficulty mode, but I find that ill-suited for a persistant world such as GW2. Instead have caves, canyons or islands that are harder to beat (either more opponents, more veterans, difficult to handle abilities, challenging environment, etc).

Re: keeping it for dungeons/fractals only: thats very scripted content specifically for designed for 5 people. I’d love to play an open world area with 1-2 friends without falling asleep.

Re: Orr was like that. True but Orr wasnt just a side area it was pretty much the whole endgame, and that was the issue. If you let the difficult and easy content exist side by side everyone can pick their prefered meal. Southsun cove has a better difficulty but is very barren and one-dimensional, unfortunately. Lets hope it improves soon.

I agree about Southsun Cove – it seems to have been a failed attempt at creating a more difficult area. The critters are tougher to kill, but that just makes for longer fights, which ends up becoming tedious in its own way.

But if they made the critters more dangerous but they could be killed quickly so that the fights were over rapidly (they die fast or you die fast), then I think the issue would be that a small team of players could probably sweep right through them, resulting in mega-farming.

I don’t know if their game engine allows it, but if they had critters that scaled dynamically in regen & dmg output, for example, based upon the number of attackers, that might mitigate potential farming issues.

Milennin.4825:

No, because open world is designed more for casual gameplay.

Here’s a simplified timeline of the problem with difficult open world PvE:
-Monsters are tough to kill, and drop bad loot = Frustrating / Waste of player’s time, not many players will bother going there.
-Give monsters better loot = Rewarding, people will try, but most will ultimately fail because the majority of players isn’t good enough to kill tough monsters.
-People form zergs to farm tough monsters without challenge for the good loot = Bye-bye difficulty, bye-bye rewarding players for skilful gameplay, good loot reduces to merely OK loot due to overfarming.
-Area is nerfed (either by making mobs anti-zerg, lowering rewards, adding harsher DR rules) = People will stop going there, leaving the area dead.

The way I see it, the open world is designed for people to explore the different places, go sight-seeing, collect some materials, join up with some friends and pwn some events.
Keep the difficulty inside dungeons, designed for 5-man parties. Way easier to balance out difficulty and rewards.

Also, there are some bosses that 1-2-shot people (depending on player gear and stats). These bosses are covered by so many by particle effects from the zerg that’s attacking it that it’s impossible to see any attack from them coming. This is not difficult, it’s just boring.

Very well said. Agree completely.

Recall that Orr was a pretty miserable place to PVE before the nerf awhile back. Being yanked around, interrupted and swarmed got tired and frustrating really fast. Since the nerf, it has been slowly ramped back up in difficulty and seems like it is at a pretty good place now.

In addition to dungeons, there are still the temple events and some other DEs where difficulty spikes significantly, for ad hoc PVE difficulty challenges.

Take a look at the PVE build in my signature. It offers support plus Power to go along with your dagger.

Bezerker.2379:

…Am I nuts for using staff as my primary weapon even on quick 1v1 fights and switching to axe when i need to say, apply vuln or focus fire down a single npc?

I honestly liked sceptre/dagger and staff more as a combo while leveling but then I’ll lose out on significant damage bonuses from the minions soon so I’m getting used to a spite point build for now.

Thanks,.
Bez

Staff and scepter/dagger works well for MM. Dagger5 AOE weakness is huge for lowering incoming damage to your minions and scepter2 is a very good AOE bleed. Scepter has a roughly 60/40 ration of direct/condition damage output, so don’t fret about using scepter and going into Spite, especially since Spite will add condition duration.

Keeping minions alive is perhaps your best DPS skill as an MM, so I like having alot of healing power to give staff2 alot of regen. See the build link in my signature – I just swap the traits to minion traits when I MM.

I can’t believe I never noticed that about the well animations! Ugh.

As for the light armor, I agree that the frilly stuff and masquerade masks is just ridiculous as “armor”, especially on males.

Bone minions, jagged gerbil, wurm, and the glowstick Lich form all need new skins.

I used minions last night again for my dailies and Orr events and had one of the Bone Minions not attack 2 or 3 times. Its possible there were more occurrences I didn’t notice, because they are so small. But, overall, that is quite a small percentage of failures (maybe 1-3%?). When dealing with fast-dying swarms of mobs, the minions are often useless since they spend more time target-switching than actually attacking, but I am not counting those as failures, since they do appear to be actively retargeting as mobs die.

1) Buggy AI is a bug, whether it occurs frequently or not.

2) Whether its 1 person with 500 battles or 10 people with 50 battles each, it adds up to the same cumulative statistical amount of battle data, and so it seems the latter circumstances cannot be discounted out of hand.

3) I still come back to wondering if there is some other factor, such as race (I’m Asura), sigil/rune procs, traits or something else which is causing these disparate experiences with minions.

4) It makes no sense why the bone minions are the primary culprit. The AI packages should be same for all the minions, with only some parameter changes to give the appearance of different behavior. Hopefully, they did not hand-code AI packages for each minion type separately.

Kravick.4906:

I’m getting vastly different results than you. I don’t know what to say. They work about three quarters of the time. The other 1/4 they just stand around doing nothing, except the ranged minions. They always work. Bone Minions especially seem prone to failure more than the others.

I’m just going to stop using minions in PVE. They’re still broken as far as I am concerned.

Its got me puzzled too. I just finished my daily (mostly in Diessa, Snowden and Wayfarer) and used minions for the whole thing and had no issues, aside from one time when after the flesh golem charged he stood around for about 4 sec before re-engaging. I also did notice that the Bone Minions are usually the last to respond, sometimes 1-2 sec later than the others, but I didn’t see them not engaging.

I gotta say, with a high healing power for high regen and traited for minions, the minions stood up very well and overall they made it pretty faceroll, even in Orr.