Guild Wars 2

Jekkt.6045:

idk if im mixing up things or just misunderstanding, i am pro splitting conquest and stronghold because when i feel like playing stronghold i wanna play stronghold without having to pray that the rng wheel lands on it.

your “there’s no reason at all to split them” confused me.

I think he meant no reason to merge, but I might be wrong.

Morwath.9817:

I will leave everything thats not Stronkhold ;P

This I’m sure is meant to be a joke, but the amount of drop outs for a while after this is released with be immense…

Elman.7382:

How can I watch this. If I missed the livestream. Thanks in advance

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/624272382

Sucks for me because I loathe conquest. If I was to get invested again into anything serious it’d have to be this mode, because I HATE conquest with a passion. Being forced onto circles is a design choice I will never ever agree with. That said, being a low chance to even get to play it and being forced to power through conquest for a bit of fun does absolutely nothing for me.

ellesee.8297:

I don’t agree with placing Stronghold in the conquest queue, but I doubt “most of the time” will be accurate! Most likely anytime Stronghold comes up, it will be picked!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

No, one guy will pick skyhammer and it’ll get picked.

This will obviously be a landslide…

YuiRS.8129:

How exactly do you counter a turret Engie? Besides not fighting them, like most Engies suggest?

Kill the only turret that really needs to die. Range them so they feel uncomfortable leaving point, or when they do, out range even their turrets.

Certain builds can handle the turrets anyways so just kill the main one and CC or use a lot of condies on the engi, two things engies cant handle very well as turret builds.

style.6173:

It is hard to take your post seriously when we don’t know any of the mechanics yet. Claiming any one particular class is going to be super strong right now is a bit naïve.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/stronghold-the-battle-of-champions-dusk/

Seems to be enough on mechanics to speculate?

GrandmaFunk.3052:

ronpierce.2760:

Gw2 however doesnt follow that system. They just nerf whatever gets complained about the most

No, that’s really not how the balancing team works.

It’s a fairly simplised and generalistic view, but it’s not far from the overall truth. Perma stealth and various thief nerfs, hambow nerfs, old ele nerfs then buffs after they were sent to the bottom, dhunfire, etc. The largest changes come to the things with the most complaining and community focus.

Well pm me some time and you can test any comp against my Petting Zoo team. It’ll be a good way to judge your various set ups.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

that’s like saying that farm systems ruin pro sports

you can’t have a competitive scene without an entry point

Erm except with your pro sports analogy, and by extension I’ll use basketball, they don’t balance the game around entry players. How funny would it be if they made 3 point shots in basket ball only worth 2.5 because people making 3 point shots were too hard for newer players… It doesn’t really work that way. Instead they motivate getting better.

Gw2 however doesnt follow that system. They just nerf whatever gets complained about the most, which tend to be low tier builds since high tier players tend to only face other high tier players and don’t complain nearly as often.

I call them slow and susceptible area denial. Since that’s pretty much a turret build in a nutshell. Nothing wrong with it.

Petting zoo = Minion Master + Spirit Ranger still does well.
Sharing with Friends as MM+ Aura Share celest Ele does good too.
Engi+Necro does well.
Thief+Spirit Ranger can do pretty good, especially if you utilize blasts in the water field.

There’s some ideas. There are a lot that work though.

Casuals, not so much. There really aren’t a lot of “casuals” who spend a lot of time on forums. It’s generally a vocal majority of low-tier players who play more than an average mount that don’t increase in skill fast enough that spend the most time complaining about various things. So casuals, no, but yes, vocal low tier players absolutely can negatively affect balance.

Beyond low skill, people with poor perception can kill build diversity, such as the massive AI hate that’s going around. Before AI it was Conditions, before that it was Burst, so on and so forth. People can’t decipher different roles and don’t fully understand the mechanisms, strengths and weaknesses of other builds and label them as “brainless and easy” if they lose to it, and you end up with knee-jerk balance reactions and instead of a balanced build you often end up with an extinct build.

Isslair.4908:

ronpierce.2760:

We actually won the match 4v5 and it felt great.

What could be great about it? It means that your opponents were completely clueless about the pvp. Or are you one of those who like to stomp noobs instead of having a fair fight?

If anything, your case only shows how bad MM can be, putting together 5 players who were so bad, that they lost in a 5v4.

I’m saying great semi-jokingly, but it was a nice break from being totally screwed by 4v5. Strangely enough every 4v5 always seems to end up on my team. Had several yesterday (or the day before?) and not one was the enemy.

dexer.2173:

ronpierce.2760:

In the up side of down, yesterday when experimenting with builds, my first game with a strange build I ended up in a 4v5 from the start. We actually won the match 4v5 and it felt great.

what does this have to do with my flame?

Even if these acc were ALTs (they was 100% not, cuz they had no clue what they was doing)… the matchmaking cant know this.
So in the eyes of matchmaking these acc are new players.

So lets say iam an epic bad player and my MMR is super bad. But even then there should be no case, that they get matched with me.

The relevance is that less qualified players allowed for a more fair game. :P

In the up side of down, yesterday when experimenting with builds, my first game with a strange build I ended up in a 4v5 from the start. We actually won the match 4v5 and it felt great.

Anirri.4156:

I actually run a MM build with axe/horn on my necro. Sure its not the “best” (aka the meta) but kitten if it is hard for me to die. I got to watch the whole field of players die at a WB while i remained at 90% hp thanks to minions pulling hp from mobs and removing my condis.

Oh, this is mostly aimed for PvP and WvW as far as the issues go, and maybe a little bit dungeons. PvE MMs (generally speaking) probably wouldn’t change too much, except maybe some slight changes here and there.

ozzy.8059:

ronpierce.2760:

I feel like this is exaggerated. Turrets heal 5% of their hp/3 sec. They heal about 420 hp (for the tougher ones, like 350 for the weaker ones). That’s like 8400 hp, maybe 10k by time you could kill one. That’s not that long. I mean the alternative is, you blink in and 2 shot all his turrets and he’s totally screwed. Is that the goal here or??? Turrets are a “bunker down” build. They need to sustain some sort of damage or they’d be pointless.

And no, that wouldn’t be a good thing. Build diversity is great and AI can add a unique level of awareness to the game, sorry your glass burst builds have a counter measure.

if turrets are a “bunker down build” and you think its fair then please remove crits and condis from my necros minions because they are meant to be our “bunker down build” what do you have to say about that?

Read my thread in my signature and I think you’ll have your answer. :P I main MM, not turrets.

Quakeman.9378:

Just remember, if you’re ever in a hotjoin and the other team has 3+ turret engis, reddit is always waiting for you.

Or Tumblr. :P

Cogbyrn.7283:

As much as I think passive immunities in an active game like GW2 are a bane, unless they perform some sort of AI/control/system overhaul, I don’t see how else to solve the problem of pets dying as easily as they seem to based on the descriptions above. I’d still love to see videos of the pets in action against coordinated teams just so I can say I’ve seen it.

My hope would be that, IF passive immunity was granted to pets, the active changes would be substantial enough to make it so pet usage is integral and counterable. I really think the amount of passive damage summoned things do should be negligible, and the active should be repeatable on some cooldown, with a tell to match. Nothing should automatically CC, or automatically shoot a net, or anything utility-wise. If they can simply remove passive action components of all types of minions, I think you can much more easily justify things like passive condi-damage immunity.

Well my (later) more preferred idea would be Burning/Crit immunity and 50% duration reduction on other conditions. That’s far more forgiving, and should really net in a slower but more stable death rate among all enemies and still allow players to kill them directly without much struggle, if that’s what they choose to do, most times killing pets isn’t even necessary, it just sort of happens. So in a way, this is just fixing an issue that plagues them keeping them from even being competitive. (Also remember this comes with a net reduced HP total)

Beyond that, I did touch on reducing basic damage. It definitely doesn’t need to be shruggable. The amount that MMs invest in pets is enormous. In fact, thats part of the joy of MM is that the necromancer itself plays almost as a controller while you allow your pets to function properly. However, I do agree in shifting more of that damage to the pets active instead, but not all of it and their damage certainly doesn’t need to be gutted. That’d do more harm than good for the build.

As for tells, yeah, not for the shadow fiend though and explosive rat. A simple blind or even blind field if traited should have no issues being instant, there are so many instant blinds in this game its insane, one allowing a necromancer to stomp once in a while wouldn’t be a game ender. Rigor mortis is negotiable. It does need a tell, but the charge currently is a bit too long, it doesn’t need to be more than a 1 second charge and has the “purple chain body” tell. The missile for the immob could possibly be a bit more noticeable. Charge needs less of an actual cast since it took many many nerfs recently, it hardly holds a flame to what it used to be capable of. The cast time isn’t needed and inconsistent with other pet abilities, but even if it was kept, maybe reduced to a .5 second. Regardless of cast time (which people rarely can tell the difference of between it and other necromancer attacks) he still gets dodged very frequently. Part of which, is his own stupidity, he gets stuck on pebbles a LOT, but either way, 1.5 sec for a not so easy to aim knockdown is just too much.

NeXeD.3042:

Those players will get better just by playing and eventually realize they will be better off not being tethered to their ai.

This, for one, but also, AI based builds have their own very real challenges that they face. They’re not be all end all power houses. In fact, they tend to have more weaknesses than benefits, and that’s what makes them enjoyable to play against harder opponents (within reason). Once people learn the basics they frequently go to things with less bindings. I can attest for this because I’ve made MANY minion masters out of people over the years, and gradually they move toward power or condition necromancy because it tends to perform better in more occasions.

Shiyo.3578:

I have no problems with the spec, I like to look at the game from everyone’s perspective and I feel bad for new players because turrets can’t possibly be enjoyable to fight against.

I don’t understand why I need to keep repeating this. I also don’t understand the constant insults against me and my skill by numerous posters in this thread. Can you have arguments or discussion without resorting to “you’re bad” “learn to play” “it’s you”? Apparently not.

It doesn’t even matter if I have problems with the spec or not, if you honestly think non-player controlled pet builds are good for the future of the game, you are not thinking very clearly or extremely biased. Considering your sig is “minion master” and you’re a “dedicated minion master”, I’m going to go with the latter.

No, I just get frustrated with people who cover up their issues with “I’m thinking about the masses” when in reality, you know you’re not. In fact, I can prove it to you. You realize these “easy builds” can be used for new players to have an easier time and build confidence while learning the ropes. New players have access to them just the same.

Secondly there are TONS of confusing and annoying mechanics in the game, pets are just part of the learning curve.

Also, AI can be great for a game. Ai builds are among the most unique, and not just “the best burst build with affective clutch defenses”. Look at AI builds in other games like a Engineers in TF2 and so on. They have a unique way to play and diversify the battle field. They typically fall under the “area denial” category. It’s a perfectly valid gameplay style to have pets and focus on control to allow them to be effective and many see the appeal. Because you can’t doesn’t mean everyone else has to suffer.

Making sweeping changes and pushing players out of their preferred play styles over a vocal minority is far worse for “the future of the game” than having a few pet builds.

displacedTitan.6897:

Super high burst out of stealth from Thief isn’t fun to fight either, everyone has something they don’t like fighting against.

Exactly this. New players have a hard time dealing with stealth, clones, conditions, etc. They actually do. And most of these things are hard to learn, technically than “don’t get hit by pets as much as possible” and “know that turrets are area denial”. But if you get rid of pets, evaded, clones, stealth, procs and sigils (anything new players might have a hard time grasping) you will be left with an all warrior game using nothing but signets.

Shiyo.3578:

High level play makes up less than 1% of the PVP playerbase.

If new players are quitting/becoming frustrated due to boring no user interaction required pets/turrets killing them, then that’s less potential players that could be part of the high level play player base, thus killing the games competitive scene even more. You can’t have a competitive scene without a low level scene.

I have no issues with turrets or pets, they just aren’t fun to fight against.

Being not high level (1% if you want to call it) doesn’t mean it’s op to the other 99%, it mostly affects people with both a lack of mechanical skill/knowledge and has poor perception and horizons.

Also, I hate to call out out, but I’m not buying that you don’t have issues with the said specs. People don’t generally go out of their way unless they have something to actually gain, and I’m sure it’s more than just “enjoyment”. Not to mention how selfish enjoyment is as a reason, considering others clearly enjoy those builds.

Not only that, but if you start making sweeping changes because some people have preferences and because very low tiers are having issues, you’re going to end up with a very raw and tasteless game. Have you considered the fact thst maybe you just have poor perception and knowledge, and need to improve your play against wise builds? Or maybe think of other reasons other players might enjoy these play styles other than “they just want to be lazy” because I can tell you that’s entirely not the case, and I’m a very dedicated Minion Master.

Sorry, lots of walls of text here, easy to miss or forget points. Part of discussion. You think I havebt had to repeat myself here? Either way, point stands, it would require SUBSTANTIAL redesign in order to even make it enough to make up for how extreme their weakness is to Aoe, especially condies.

Guardian of Angels.9867:

The only problem I face is that I sometimes target the pet / turrets where I want to hit the player.

Make players prioritise over AI, that’s my 2 cents.

They do. If you accidentally tab past a player, escape to deselect and retab, the first rotation will always be players but then I goes to AI.

I disagree because most AI builds lack certain givens of other builds, usually defensive maneuvers, cc breaks, mobility, and non-pet utilities. It’s a totally different way to play, you control enemies to allow your pets to be fully effective. Pet builds focus on controlling enemies and looking out for their own back and have to make sure they’re in the best spot at all times because they lack board cover.

Unlike say, dps builds, who have mobility, cc breaks, aegis, blinds, various things like this, they have more defensive utility to support their own damage game. Personally, I think insta-gibbing glassis more toxic, personally, but it’s part of the game.

People have two problems. One, AI deals damage where as more “passive” or even active defenses only make you live longer, it’s easy to see why one hurts new players more, but thst doesn’t make it bad, and yes, in many cases it would be nice to move more passive damage to active damage, but not abolish the idea of area denial pet classes all together.

Secondly, people are very tunnel visioned, thy have an ego to protect and can’t accept that there are legitimate unique ways to play. Admitting that you’re a very low level player so “x” shouldn’t exist should instantly draw a red flag. Try improving before making such harsh calls like that. I don’t “like” grenade engineers, but how silly would I sound to say “I hate them, remove grenades from pvp!” It’s very silly.

My suggestion is to stop being so close minded and don’t judge everything based on how well rabits can handle them.

Lily.1935:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Haha, I was going to post about WD pet builds, because I remembered them being absolutely insane in RoS.

Anywho, @Lily: how do you suggest they give you “micromanage” abilities with pets in a game like GW2 with its controls/interface? All you really have to work with right now is the active. The best they could do, in my opinion, is give F2 – F4 abilities for Necros, and when you raise a minion via utility (not healing or elite), it changes your F2 – F4 to be pet defensives. That leaves out the Healing and Elite abilities though, which doesn’t seem “fair”.

I’m not sure how else they can let you micromanage pet with the current control scheme without introducing entirely new controls just for a subset of utilities (which I guarantee they don’t want to do).

weapon skills and death shroud. Honestly, with GW2’s combat system it makes it easier then in GW1.

Are you suggesting adding new abilities? Because nothing we have currently comes close to helping them with a burning field or mass entanglement or anything else of the like that annihilates minions. As for traits, we’re already bloated enough…

See that’s sort of the thing. I’m trying to shoot within the boundaries of realistic. There ‘are’ other ways to handle it, but realistically, none of which they’re likely to take. Its a single build and not worth the resources. The whole game could use various large changes, but I’m shooting for something with precedence, its proven to be effective, it’s even a weaker version of that, and hopefully just enough to get us to be able to team fight properly.

Solstice.1097:

i want to know why the heck the “rangers need some balancing” thread got closed but all of the turret engi threads where there is much harder qq’ing going on stay open.

One of them got closed, I know for sure. Too many to kill!

They should both reduce the damage on both(geomancy, too, they all outweigh other sigils far too much) and add an exclusive fact to fire and air, making them share a cooldown again. Especially since they’re essentially the same thing except one is more Aoe and one is single target, it seems like a valid choice to make.

Side note though, they should rework a lot of other sigils to make them worth using.

Side note: I think specializations are a genius way to prevent total rerolling. It might be the motivation some people need to stay on their primary class so the world isn’t completely overrun by Revs for several months. Of course, it will a bit anyways, but it’s certainly going to be better with specializations.

Without significant changes, no amount of “active” play is going to save minions from being AOEd down in the current state of the game, not just on the necromancers end, but how other classes are built as well. We’d need some unusually potent active play to keep pets from being killed in single burning fields, a few Crits of a hammer warrior, a standard rotation of Ele, etc. there’s nothing fundamentaly wrong with passive defenses for pets, especially if an entire build is based around their survival. More than anything, lack of Aoe protection feels like a lack of planning on the devs part from the beginning. Like I said, in many games pets have substantial AOE protection (way more than I’m asking for here) to make up for AI incompetencies.

Allowing pets to survive purely on the will of the necromancer is a long shot away as it stands, in game game where practically everything cleaves or is AoE. Pets absolutely have to be able to survive though when a build is literally 50+% their pets. Like I said, every trait goes into minions, we have horrible defenses, and without traits are damage and deathshroud is rather insignificant, so let’s dying in a single attack is far beyond a counter at this point.

I’m willing to hear you out though on “active play” that’s going to keep pets alive against a single Aoe class though, that will also keep them alive in a midfight where they basically go in and get vaporized.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Custom Arenas allow you to have all the 3v3 and 2v2 you want.

Yeah, not the same. Customs arenas let you have all the conquest and 10v10 you want. Let’s just remove tpvp rated and unrated, right?

I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but lower HP but crit/condi immunity does more for everyone involved. Pets could still be killed by more builds (Power builds entirely) and most condition builds still do some form of power damage. The difference being pets wouldn’t be getting AOEd down. They’d still die in team fights, just slower, and they wouldn’t be instantly gibbed in 1v1 but still able to die.

Your alternative for “Just give them more health” means if you buff them enough to be good in team fights (just based on HP) no one would be able to realistically kill them in 1v1 situations ever. More builds could handle pets with our method over yours, and it actually fixes the AOE issues rather than just adjusting the amount of AOE needed to basically do the same thing, wipe them all out.

With out method, power and zerkers would kill them at a similar rate, but with lower HP that rate would be sufficient enough that critting wouldn’t be necessary, and in fact would be overkill. Conditions, well I provided a separate alternative to that, but you seem so strangely against defenses against conditions, even if its partial (As if hp and toughness isn’t partial defenses against power?).

Bazooka.3590:

Lol . I saw that will come.
U know its called customer feedback^^

Actually it isn’t. It’s called bandwagoning. Based on usage and high tier play, people should be doing exactly this but for Celestial Rifle engineer and celestial ele who are still able to do too many things a bit too well. Instead, and we’ve seen this before, low tier-only builds get kicked around because people aren’t willing to learn or accept advice or even perspectives. GW2 is a team game, yet ironically the only builds that ever get massive attention are builds solely good at 1v1, and what that tells us is people aren’t focused on balancing the game properly, they just have an ego to protect. That’s a pretty toxic mindset, especially when it kills build diversity all because people can’t “see” the drawbacks of other builds or realistic implications of them. Instead, they noticed they died and fairly easy and it becomes mass hysteria. Equally disappointing is these lower tier players really outnumber upper tier, so essentially people who just enjoy different play styles all end up forced into these very few ACTUALLY “OP” builds that manage to slide under the wire because they’re not as noticeably powerful if they’re not rocking people in 1v1 combat.

Bhawb.7408:

Yep, I pitched this idea like 2 years ago with the idea to be able to turn bone minions into exploding fluffy bunnies. Unfortunately no such thing as of yet, but its a great idea.

Lol you would. That said, I wish I could have Risen! Zombies would be great. There are already ranged, melee, giant and even exploding Risen. All of the pieces are there.

My question is, what are people willing to give turret engineers for their losses? I bring this up because I know people are bad and don’t give two kittens about diversity, different play styles, or balance. They lose and instantly hate it.

Turret engies have simplicity and potent area denial.

They also have, for weaknesses, terrible map coverage, mobility, defenses, lack of evades/blocks, no weapon swap, condition clear, so forth. They are literally good for ONE thing, and they aren’t even high rank “viable”, so why on earth would it need to be nerfed?

I’m willing to be its a mix of two things. One being sheer ignorance. Having seen a lot of random QQ posts in my time, people rarely know anything about the mechanics of other classes/build. Secondly, in this case especially, AI. People can’t fathom basic facts that pet builds in this game (or any) are perfectly valid options, as they should be. All pet builds have TERRIBLE defenses and mobility and generally are worthless without their pets. They work with their pets to ensure maximum potential. Turrets and minions are part of a thing called area denial and they have to be able to survive basic Aoe just to be able to function.

Nerf the turrets protection to Crits/conditions, it won’t “bring them in line”, they’re already not high tier. So while we’re complaining about a low tier build, we’re asking crutches. As soon as the asked for nerf went though, turrets would vanish, all because ignorance and refusal to learn.

Might as well make everyone an axe/warrior+riffle zerker warrior and have everyone go at it since it’s about the only thing people will be able to wrap their heads around.

Side note: Pet builds have passive damage and low defenses, so they have to pace their defenses to survive. Burst builds focus on damage and rely on just as “easy” defenses such as evades, blocks, aegis, high cleansing and so on so they can attack. They’re different play styles with different goals. That’s great for the game. The only time AI is “op” is when a new player allows full pet uptime on them. That’s not a reason to call for something to be “unviable”. People need to learn to take different perspectives and above all, learn to play before complaining.

Cynz.9437:

turrets should be affected by condi dmg and crits

Wrong.

Complaining to get everything but what you play is skillful.

Some people in here don’t know much about history or weapons. Shields have been used, historically, just as offensively as defensively. Big heavy crushing blows hurt.

Granted, double shields likely wouldnt be idea because a sword and shield would provide more coverage, regardless the idea of a double shielded juggernaut wouldnt be that unusual for a fantasy base. In fact, I’d argue it’s not used enough. Would be unique enough to excite people.

Um… 48% win rating is not great at all… This sounds more like a scoring issue than a broken build… Hell thst should be easy to take from this. The build can’t even “carry” a 50% win ratio…

How the hell are we complaining about the build at this point? You know what we call this in the real world? A confirmation bias.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eagle_Eye

But these things are expressed. O.o

^ Wrecked.

Battou.7832:

Nice troll post, man. Engineers have too much access to swiftness as it is.

Actually… Turret builds don’t have swiftness. XD

I’ve mentioned before, actually. These changes would require Fetid Consumption to change. It just depends on how it’s changed that will finally determine how it needs to be changed. For instance, if pets got total condition immunity (damage ones) perhaps it could be made to only pull crippling conditions (immob, cripple, chill, fear)~ ones that still effect them, and it would actually fit the idea of a necromancer being high pressure and hard to escape force in place of actual mobility. That way, let’s would actually be easier to kite indirectly.

If my alternative “Immunity to Crits/burning and reduced condition durations by 50%” is used perhaps no change would be needed. It’s already not frequently used,‘if pets could take them and not die as fast as before it might be worth using at all, and of course, this trait would still cause them to die faster than without the trait, and at a decent rate considering they’d be losing the +50% hp with the trait change.

I think overall, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. There’s a reason most games have unrealistic pet defenses or super buffed Aoe defense (WoW let’s take like 90% reduced damage from Aoe…). It’s required for pet classes to function in high hazard fights, especially if their entire gameplay relies on them.

My first suggestion is nothing different than turrets, except that they have the trade off of mobility and the draw back travel times and more in the thicket of fights, so more susceptible to all base damage that would hit them.

The other option, and my personal favorite, Immunity to Crits and burning and 50% reduced condition timing, allows all power damage to kill them if they wish as well as condition builds. The difference is they wouldn’t be susceptible to non-directed burst and condition sweeping. Even this is generous though, because there’s still thst risk of Aoe bombardment causing them to die.

You seem rather resistant to the idea that pets need “passive” Aoe protection, but most well developed games actually have this, and it’s much more potent. A build that absolutely required pets to function need high functioning Aoe protection for the pets. In the end, we may just have to agree to disagree. But having played MM FOR 2 years here, I know a lot about the ins and outs of my suggestions and the pros and cons. I think you underestimate how much the HP reduction with these changes actually just streamline their death rates. Yes, in net, them actually surviving will be “a buff”, but they absolutely need it. With my second change, Aoe would still be a consideration when fighting MM, but it would end up more of a counter than a “hard counter”, and that’s fine.

Novuake.2691:

1. Stop trolling.
2. You should not try to kill a turret.
3. Please stop the turret engi hate, NOTHING OP about it.

GEZUS…

The only alternative to complaining about every other build being OP is admitting that they personally aren’t very good. Which is more likely? And i mean this on a broader scale, not even just the OP.

holodoc.5748:

Something happened to ranked queue times. I find myself more and more heading to unranked arenas because they require at most 1-2m for a match to start. Ranked however can easily go up to 4-5min now.

Probably just way more popular. The rewards are streamlined now right? I know back when I was doing a lot of tpvp before, many people just did it because it gave better rewards so it became a casual playground.

Not only that, but I think we’d eventually end up over-complicating things. Minions as they function is… decently okay. The general counters, such as kiting, juking, CC, and bursting the master (who already has limited defenses) would all remain viable options. And in fact, with lower HP, pets would still die quite frequently. However what wouldn’t happen is they wouldn’t die to silly long lasting hazards and damage that is tuned to be cleansed. That’s another major consideration about them. Every pet build in the game is considered not viable, as it stand, except for one, the only one with defenses against condition damage. Things like a single bleed can do power damage and a thousand, sometimes thousands of damage over time because it’s intended to be cleansed semi-frequently, and dodged semi-frequently. This leads to all pet builds having no grip in these situations because pets have no defenses against them. As seen with turrets, they do need this type of defense (and we’re excusing the turrets ability to heal 5% per 3 seconds) to ever sustain in any fight against someone with even a bit of AOE, let alone a team fight that is often littered with massive cleave.

In response to that, and expecting them to live longer, I suggest reducing the passive “easy” damage that pets can do and put more active play into pets. And like I’ve said before, this is really killing two birds with one stone in the sense that while we’re allowing ourselves to fight in team fights, enemies would be less prone to the equally toxic Death Nova bombs, where 5 pets can die at once and essentially deal 75% of a non-tanky person’s health.

Ideally the way to beat a minion master wouldn’t be to AOE down his utilities then have an easy fight, but fight in a battle of attrition, which is what minion builds are supposed to be about anyways (similarly to any leeching build) with moderate sustain and healing. We have this decently well against enemies like Rangers and thieves who don’t rely on AOE very much anyways, and usually those fights end up pretty good. Then you have cases where AOE is heavy (warrior/engineer/ele/guardian) and it literally becomes a fight of “Will they survive the death novas, can I finish them, or do I just dwindle away shortly after they kill off all of my pets at once”? That really isn’t interesting for anyone, and I feel it may have a lot to do with frustrations people have when facing minions, outside of simply feeling overwhelmed by numbers, which is just a fun perk for the build.

Right now, if they get the first strike a Necromancer can use staff 2→staff 5 (since minions start all clumped up) and basically clear a necro’s kitten nal. Combustive shot +/- an Arcing arrow and you’re at a loss. A few moments of an Elementalist in fire and the pets are mostly dead. A few grenades and they are mostly dead, and those that aren’t struggle reaching the engineer before they are dead. Guardians blink in and use GS4 and if they get off any of a whirling wrath, they’re basically all dead, too.

The only thing that we have in these moments is death nova. We win because AOE retaliated enough, or we lose because it wasn’t enough and now we’re completely defenseless and have terrible damage.

In no way should that ever even be acceptable. We’re not talking about counter play, but hard countering from BASIC play, these players aren’t doing anything unusual but attacking the necromancer and the pets just die to basic rotations within moments.

Supercharging HP, as someone has mentioned, doesn’t fix the issue, if anything it makes it worse. They might last longer, but in 1v1 situations they become too hard to kill. The reason I suggested this change is because I’ve seen that any build with any amount of power (carrion included) can kill low HP targets even if immune to crit/condi damage. Where as high enough HP to survive team fights, you can forget it. No amount of attacking the pets 1v1 will ever be worth it.