Guild Wars 2

One of the things I enjoyed most in this game was that no matter what, all the dungeons were beneficial for me to do as they lead to me getting stuff that was useful to me at one point or another.

However, now that ascended gear is being introduced, it seems to me like all 8 of our current dungeons and their rewards will become obsolete. There won’t be a point in running any of them besides getting the skin you want or tokens for a gift for a legendary weapon.

I detested how all content became obsolete as soon as the newest raid was introduced in WoW. Does Anet plan on going that same route? Are they just gonna let everything they had starting out be blown into the wind for this ascended stuff?

They’re really going all the way for gear progression.

So much for no gear grind,
oh, those dungeons that we started with?Arah? Ascalonian catacombs? What about crucible of eternity? they are all obsolete now!
So much for the “different from other MMOs”

pyronix.4081:

Hi Necros,

I am exploring this class and I am level 11 right now and immensely enjoying my staff and marks. However, I seem to be at a loss as to what to put in the other weapon slot.

I’m currently running with Scepter/Warhorn (for the speed buff) but it seems to be subpar to how awesome the staff is.

The dagger and axes do wonderful damage but seems to be a little unweildy (especially the dagger). Dagger OH I found is really good but I don’t want to be kittened in terms of speed.

I am looking for a build that works well with Marks and Wells, preferably a power type build (although I won’t mind if the build you give me is condition just please bear in mind that this is a leveling build so the faster I kill stuff, the better), and that will do well in dynamic events (in terms of loot tagging).

I do not care for PvP or Dungeons at this point.

Can someone quickly post their build or suggest something based on Staff, Marks, Wells, and AoE goodness?

TY~!

If you’re going a power/staff/wells build I actually have a suggestion since that is what I personally run in dungeons while waiting for a minion AI fix.

You’ll want to go for leveling purposes:
1-30: 10 points into death magic (get staff cooldown or greater marks), 10 points into blood (get transfusion), and 10 into spite (might on life blast).
31-60: get 20 in death magic (pick up either greater marks or staff cooldown depending on what you didn’t pick up), 20 points into blood (well cooldown trait) put the last 10 where you want.
61-80: go 30 into death magic for protection from wells, 30 into blood magic for vampiric wells, and the last 10 wherever you want (I personally prefer the might on life blast).

when you get the ability to weapon swap you probably will end up using staff+dagger/focus. This combination gives you the most direct damage.

For utilities you want well of blood (of course), well of corruption (highest damage well and causes vulnerability), and well of darkness (you’re basically invincible inside it from melee enemies). The last slot goes to your situational well. Bring well of power if you know you will be dealing with conditions, or bring the other well if the enemy stacks boons.

As an elite I recommend lich form for raw damage, however the flesh golem is a solid elite even without the boosts from the minion traits.

If you do use lich form, you ALWAYS want to cast mark of horror (the one that summons 5 jagged horrors) immediately. If you do it quickly enough it cools down in time for you to cast it a second time at the end of the elite form.

your other skills are somewhat self explanatory:
auto attack: high damage single target hit
#2: AOE vulnerability, cast it on cooldown.
#3: an AOE interrupt, great for stopping an enemy from using a powerful ability.
#4: mark of horror, cast it as soon as you can and make it priority at the end
#5: AOE cleanse. Removes conditions from allies and boons from enemies, a great support skill.

If you go with the flesh golem, just use the charge as either an AOE interrupt or to deal hefty damage to a clumped mob. If you use it on an enemy against a wall it does even more damage.

This honestly DESTROYED my love for this game. I bought it because I was hoping for something different, a new MMO experience.

Yeah, dynamic events give it to an extent. However what I loved most about the game was the lack of gear progression.

Now that it’s in, the game is basically turning into WoW 2.0 slowly.

it seems whatever soul that was in this game, is no more.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Where does this put us? Please remove all elites from the elementalist, put them into utility slot and make us a fourth utility slot or start caring for your elementalist players by adding other elites or fixing our current ones, your concept is simply nerfed to death and theres no elite skill in the gigantic list of 3 that is going to be of any use making us click the button 0 on our keyboard.

Woah now, I understand you might think your elites are underpowered but they are FAR too strong to be regular utility skills.

This is a problem with all pets/minions, not just the elemental. Ranger pets get 1-shot in dungeons all the time (and are often left dead, because they have a bad habit of accidentally triggering traps, mid-fight), Necro minions die if you sneeze on them, Engineer turrets may as well be made of paper mache…

Having your elite skill reduced to a 1-shot wonder is frustrating, but understand that this is a game-wide problem, not something that specifically targets Elementalists. If you want to see changes, you should ask for changes for everybody.

This is very true. There is a pretty big issue with pets in dungeons atm due to AOE spam boss mechanics (some bosses increases number of summons/aoes due to the number of allies rather than players, making pets in many fights detrimental such as giganticus lupicus.)

Kuthos.9623:

Elementalists are a high skill cap class. Therefore you will run into people who will either own you (because they’ve practiced a lot), or they’ll be a joke. D/D elementalist can kill a mesmer pretty easily as long as they watch for confusion and cure it instantly.

And yeah, a lot of fights start out horrible for me because RTL decides to just stun me for 5 seconds. That’s always a good start :P

This here. Elementalists have the largest number of skills available, it’s just a matter of using them right.

As an example, on my ele I use scepter/focus. If I were to run into a fight against a GS warrior in air attunement slamming all of my keys I would throw up the projectile reflection skill to no avail wasting precious time. However if I were to swap to earth attunement and use my invulnerability when he tried to bullrush/100 blades me I would avoid a lot of damage.

If you keep a log of what’s available to you in the back of your mind you could probably roll face.

TWMagimay.9057:

Simplicity.7208:

You shouldn’t have too much trouble surviving with an ele. My ele has constant protection up. Protection turns that 14k health pool into an effective 21k health pool. Not to mention all the knockdowns, stuns, interrupts, heals, and mobility we get. If things start going south, run. It’s one of your biggest strengths; being uncatchable. You can’t be engaged to the death unless you want to.

Thieves have it just as hard, but like eles their biggest strength is also being slippery.

I don’t think OP was talking about survival issues. More like…a mesmer has 50% more hp than an elementalist and the mesmer also has stealth and clones to take a lot of heat off the char. So, if protection turns your 14k hp into 21k hp, the mesmer protection turns his/her 21k hp into 30k hp.

I never got the idea behind different hp or, for that matter, armour type. That is primary a healer-tank-dps feature and makes the whole “we are all dps” thing feel unfinished.

IIRC it’s something called parallel balancing. It’s when you balance classes/factions/whatever by their strengths and differences rather than making them all the same.

If all the classes had homogenous health and armor it would be rather boring no?

Nostromo.4126:

Tx for the heads up guys. I guess if I start serious dungeon-running I’ll have to respec.
Are they also useless/detrimental in WvWvW? i.e. did you mean ALL PvP?
I have no desire to play open world PvP but wanted to try WvWvW soon if possible.

WvWvW is a very mixed bag. Since many players won’t have all of their traits/skills you will find yourself with a leg up (assuming you go in at level 80).

The PvP I’m mostly talking about is sPvP and tPvP where the only factors within it are you and your 4 other allies. With each individual players abilities and plays making more of a difference, that moment where your bone minion doesn’t go in can cost you dearly.

1. Increase blood fiend heal on attack and attack damage by 100 each (at level 80) making it comparable to other heal skills through the minions passive auto attacks rather than through it’s active.
2. Remove jagged horror degen (this will inevitably cause the mark of horror on lich form to get an increased cooldown so you could only cast it once in that form.)
3. Make the axe cause more vulnerability per auto attack.

Axe is pretty much just there for the retaliation. Mind you the retaliation skill is really good as it creates a lose lose situation for the enemy. They can’t really get away but they don’t want to hit you either. However the auto attack and channel leave something to be desired.

Nostromo.4126:

Is there no love here for a fill minion DM build? sniff
I’m a slow poke, so only just hit 40th with necro. Having a lot of fun in PvE & finding a summoner to be quite playable. What am I missing? :-/

The issues are in dungeons and PvP. In PvP their lacking AI makes them too unreliable, and in dungeons they die too quickly to AOEs.

Another factor to take into account, is that some bosses scale their number of AOEs to the number of allies (not players) you have with you. This leads to minions becoming completely detrimental in some dungeons. (Arah is a good example)

NixZero.7540:

the problem with axe is that, as a straight power damage dealer is in competition with dagger.
dagger has all its limitations from melee range so if axe dealt similar dps it would make dagger completely obsolete.
so the solution is to adjust extra effects, not dps – axe is in dire need of something else than just vuln in skill 1 and something at all in skill 2 (I would love some defensive boon as we dont have any reliable ones thus making dagger our all-out balls-to-the-wall burst damager and axe the tanky weapon, but that’s just my personal preference).

I agree, either:
1. increase vulnerability stacks from 2 to 3-4
2.Have the axe 2 cause weakness in an AOE around the channel target

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Perhaps a 1/2 second fear on the last strike in the auto-attack? Makes the dagger an extremely disruptive weapon, then, and have a reason for existing.

I don’t think you realize just how over powered any interrupt on an auto attack chain would be. Even if it was a 1/4th second fear it would make necromancer a staple in PvP due to the ability to make it impossible to stomp any ally you are near ever.

War Mourner.5168:

If you don’t know, the blast finisher from bone minions are quite… unusual. Although the damaging blast is centered around the bone minion, the blast finisher is in fact based off your position.

That is, you could be standing in a water field with a ranger buddy, and your bone minion could be next to a couple of mobs in a fire field, but when you detonate it, no area might happens, but an aoe heal effect would happen around you.

(if people don’t know this, maybe I should list it on the bug thread?)

Actually there are two blasts. One from you and one from your minion. I’ve gotten chaos armor from a friends chaos storm with my minions finisher when I wasn’t in the field.

If you make the shadow fiend use his blind as your first attack, it usually makes all the minions attack that target.

It also helps if you attack the enemy from <600 range.

Nyah.7428:

No edit Forgot to add in there that I normally use the Crests instead of runes just because I think the direct stat increase is better then the rune bonuses.

no no no no no no runes are leagues better. You just need to find the runes best for you. Personally I like runes of the lich for the vitality and condition duration (longer cripples and weakness) and the chance to spawn a bone minion. However if you like to run a staff you might like per say rune of the necromancer more.

Donttaxmebro.5074:

For my MM necro, the stat priority is condition damage>healing>toughness. I am sporting a full carrion exotic set with runes of undead. All my jewels are sapphire and the weapon is mystic staff.

That depends entirely on the weapons he has. If he’s going scepter/dagger and staff then yes. However I personally prefer power>toughness>vitality as a minion master with axe/focus and staff.

The thing about minion master is that your only heals that scale off of healing power are mark of blood and blood fiend sacrifice. (if you use focus the #4 as well). Meaning you won’t gain much at all from healing power.

Since you only have 2 skills for healing, it’s a good idea to stack toughness and vitality (assuming you use axe/focus and staff) as it lets you survive longer and summon minions more/reflect more over time with retaliation.

Crit would be wasted on this build as you won’t be running any chance per crit traits. Even if you did, you won’t be getting critical % from your trees so that would be a poor investment.

I’m not seeing anything in that thread about 5 pages of patch notes unless we are talking about Jon’s mentioned blog post.

The bug team and event teams are completely separate. Jon has been hyping up the amount of game fixes this next patch will have in general, so I think it’s a safe bet something good will happen for us.

sorrow.2364:

Nickczh.6341:

sorrow.2364:

The final solution to every Necro problems.

Curses: + power + Condition Damage
Spite: + precision + critical damage
Death Magic: + toughness + condition duration
Blood Magic: + vitality + healing power
Soul Reaping: + LF pool + boon duration

Let all traits work and we’ll finally see a viable Necro.

From your solution, I only see ONE type of Necro coming about. If I had such a distribution, I would go 30/0/30/0/10, but it would just be a power-conditionomancer.

Reasoning:
1. There’s a recent post talking about toughness or vitality – I would go more toughness since we already have the highest base HP pool.
2. Going toughness also increases condition duration.
3. Power and condition damage together – who wouldnt want that?

Rather OP IMO. The last ten points.. Spite for the burst DPS people, Blood Magic for the tank-lovin’ people, Soul Reaping for the rest.

Where are the other builds (Minion Master)? Do enlighten me because I don’t see it.

Minion Master is in Death Magic. A Minion Master apply more conditions than boons, so, overall, Boon Duration on Death Magic make not that much sense as it makes on Soul Reaping (see Spectral Armor, for instance).

This is correct. Minion masters apply more weakness, cripple, and chill than anything else. The only boons are retaliation (assuming you use an axe) and regeneration. While death shroud builds tend to have a lot of “gain X boon when entering Death shroud” traits as well as the trait that grants might on life blast.

gamefreak.5673:

So you want use to channel commands for the pets but make the actions instant. I am not sure how this would be better for us since then we already have long cast times and adding more is even worse to me.

I think the OP is saying that rigor mortis (bone fiend active) and the flesh golem charge should both be instant cast like the bone minion/shadow fiend actives.

I can agree that rigor mortis should be instant cast for what it is. I don’t know if I agree with the flesh golem charge being instant cast due to how powerful it is.

It really bothers me that Anet designed it this way. It essentially permanently locked out minion masters from tPvP as long as the mesmer exists. In my opinion it is a bad design and it shouldn’t work this way at all.

If i am going to put all of my traits into minions, I shouldn’t be punished and lose EVERYTHING to a single ability.

The shadow fiend has an instant cast time. (the minion itself needs to channel though).

The minion master is less situational now since we don’t need bodies. However I do agree that the OBSCENE AOE in dungeons makes minion master incredibly useless.

It also bothers me that certain boss mechanics punish you severely for running minions.

gamefreak.5673:

striker.3704:

To be honest if you want to increase your survive-ability in DS or maximize your DS use you should focus on ways to increase life force generation.

ATM I can generate life force about as fast as I can spend it (mind you this is in PvE where I don’t get hit) with my minion build, so I can’t imagine how fast it would be with a true DS build.

The issue is it does not increase it when it says it should. We have base stat in a trait line that does not work.

I’m not saying that there isn’t something that needs fixing. I’m saying that as of right now to maximize DS you need to focus on LF generation as it gives you a longer overall up-time on DS.

To be honest if you want to increase your survive-ability in DS or maximize your DS use you should focus on ways to increase life force generation.

ATM I can generate life force about as fast as I can spend it (mind you this is in PvE where I don’t get hit) with my minion build, so I can’t imagine how fast it would be with a true DS build.

I don’t understand the hate on weakness, it’s an effective 25% damage reduction. That’s like a full stack of vulnerability but in reverse.

Anet did at least say recently that they were gonna fix necros. To say they don’t care is just silly.

Also the game is very young (only been released like 2-3 months) gotta give it time.

Home Style.9640:

Does it even matter what we think anymore?

Anet has yet to make any changes to the necro, only minor stupid ones that no one even notices. Not only that but unless Anet has some knowledge dmbs with extreme amounts of data, then I doubt they are actually listing our concerns.

I feel like posting in the necro forum has less of an impact than voting in yesterday’s presidential election. No matter what we say they won’t listen.

Anet had a few posts from Jon a week or two ago about how they were looking into the issues we discuss a lot on here.

Duleshna.7430:

striker.3704:

minion master (20% cooldown reduction), flesh of the master (50% more minion health), training of the mater (+30% more minion damage), fetid corruption (minions each can take off one boon on attack, 10 second cooldown individually for each minion), death nova (minions release a poison cloud on death), vampiric master (minions siphon health on hit), and fetid consumtion (minions draw conditions from thier master) all boost minions in some way.

Minion base stats are based on your level. (However putrid explosion damage from bone minions scales off of your power, and taste of death from the blood fiend scales off of healing power.)

Yes, so what I have understood is that no matter what you wear/wield, it will not affect the stats on your Minions. You could be naked or fully geared for Condition Damage (kinda odd but whatever), Powerbuild ect… and Still no effect on Minions statwise. Only the level you are matters. (Even attributes themselves don’t matter, only the Major Traits you choose?)

I do hope I made mistakes on that one… Honestly, if that is really the case, I should probably just go and shoot myself in the leg. That is just… kitten

Nope, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Originally minions were much stronger, and the necromancer had abilities in his trait line that increased the number of minions his utilities summoned. However, Anet found minions to be too strong on their own in builds which didn’t spec for them, so they nerfed minions and gave us traits to boost them (this all happened before BWE1).

During BWE2 jagged horrors didn’t lose health overtime. However they brought back the degen on BWE3 for reasons I don’t personally know (apparently the little rats were overpowered in PvP).

There aren’t any attributes that boost minions directly. Reanimator lets you summon a jagged horror when you kill an enemy, however it has no influence on fights. Protection of the horde increases your toughness per minion, however that’s only your own personal toughness.

In my opinion with these booster traits we have now, minions are pretty damaging. The bigger issues with minions are:
1. In most dungeons there are tons of AOE, rendering minions useless. (even with the 50% health boost they die within moments of an AOE being dropped).
2. Their AI is wonky making them unreliable in PvP.
3.minion master doesn’t reduce minion active cooldowns (this probably isn’t a bug however it is an issue)
4.Both plague form and lich form kill all currently summoned minions.
5. The flesh golem cannot swim, and our only elite underwater is plague form. So you basically don’t have an elite underwater.

Berullos.6928:

Hmm, I guess that makes sense to deter them from attacking it, however it is all cases its just better to attack them the whole time while they kill the wurm. Using the teleport is the same purpose that they want to force you to get rid of stun breaker.

I think its mandatory to take 50% minion life if you use wurm/golem anyways, so them attacking the wurm is me attacking them the whole time which will put me ahead.

If they’re going to kill the wurm either way it would be a waste not to take advantage of the free weakness (I’m going to assume you use putrid mark to setup a combo), poison, and 10% life force since it’s instant cast as it still leaves your other abilities you would be casting on the ready.

However yes, if they are attacking it from a range you might be better off simply attacking the player.

Delryn.7235:

striker.3704:

Delryn.7235:

You know what? In the tree that gives you BOON DURATION, why not actually give you some sort of bonus directed towards giving you BOONS? The necro has a shameful arsenal of boons available for him, why not something like – whenever you kill a foe get retaliation/regen/something for 5 seconds (10 second cooldown). Something like that?

Just something because another thing that saddens me about Death Magic is that it adds to boon duration… WHAT BOONS?!

regen (mark of blood, retaliation from axe 3, movement speed from warhorn, protection from wells) mostly the only boons you get as a necromancer are from wells and the staff, which would be the only reason to spec into the tree anyway.

If you spec into a tree not for the traits but for the stats it provides, you are doing something terribly wrong.

It’s a shame, I wanna go into that tree for toughness and staff traits, I’d love to have a few boons here and there but I don’t play with spectral skills and I use a scepter and dagger. All I’d have as far as boons is one regen that most likely wouldn’t hit me with my staff, that’s it. I do use wells, so I’d have to spend a major trait JUST so I’d be able to give myself a boon – A boon.

So it’s ridiculous that with everything I have I’d only be able to unlikely give myself ONE boon, TWO if I spend a major trait.

Most other classes can give themselves a few boons without even thinking about it, ESPECIALLY if they trait into the “boon tree”.

If you’re using a scepter and dagger I’m assuming you’re going for a condition spec. In that case you should be going for the traits that boost your condition damage first and then get the mark boosts for your staff. In fact you don’t need to go all the way into the death magic tree to get both of those boosts. Assuming you go 30 into curses, that still leaves you with 20 points to spare into another tree like spite. That 15% boost to boon duration isn’t a big waste even if your only boon is mark of blood.

If you are not doing a condition spec then you’re spreading your recources way too thin. You should spec for utilities first, then the weapon that has synergy with your utilities, then the secondary weapon, then stats.

minion master (20% cooldown reduction), flesh of the master (50% more minion health), training of the mater (+30% more minion damage), fetid corruption (minions each can take off one boon on attack, 10 second cooldown individually for each minion), death nova (minions release a poison cloud on death), vampiric master (minions siphon health on hit), and fetid consumtion (minions draw conditions from thier master) all boost minions in some way.

Minion base stats are based on your level. (However putrid explosion damage from bone minions scales off of your power, and taste of death from the blood fiend scales off of healing power.)

Thomy.9816:

Are pets counted into this limitation of five?

No response for the spread across standing target and target ground?

Pets, allies, and so fourth all count towards it. however priorities go:
player/enemy player>ally/enemy NPC>ally pets/enemy pets>objects

The simplest way to look at it is that toughness is multiplicative of vitality. If you spec into vitality you will have more resistance to conditions however direct damage will eat through you (8k crit from heart seeker). While toughness gives you greater and greater resistance to direct damage (especially criticals), but doesn’t do anything for conditions.

At it’s core, it’s basically if you want to survive crits more easily or conditions as power is basically a given in any build.

Delryn.7235:

You know what? In the tree that gives you BOON DURATION, why not actually give you some sort of bonus directed towards giving you BOONS? The necro has a shameful arsenal of boons available for him, why not something like – whenever you kill a foe get retaliation/regen/something for 5 seconds (10 second cooldown). Something like that?

Just something because another thing that saddens me about Death Magic is that it adds to boon duration… WHAT BOONS?!

regen (mark of blood, retaliation from axe 3, movement speed from warhorn, protection from wells) mostly the only boons you get as a necromancer are from wells and the staff, which would be the only reason to spec into the tree anyway.

If you spec into a tree not for the traits but for the stats it provides, you are doing something terribly wrong.

1. That’s a fault on your part. You need to have them all sloted to the same utility slot in water as on land, then they won’t die. (except the flesh golem)
2. Use your secondary set. by level 24 you should already have it unlocked. But yes the auto attack is slow.
3. This is something already being addressed.
4.This is something being addressed.

LastDay.3524:

I might make an exception from Minions spawning from the deaths of other Minions, because then you have some indirect control at least.

It would be pretty cool if reanimator did that. Remove the jagged horror degen, keep the cap of them at 5, and remove the cooldown. I’d take that over death nova if it was made into a grand master death magic trait.

Also, I don’t see why they don’t just scrap the jagged horror trait and give us an actual utility spell that summons ~5 of them with slower health degen and grant LF on death (IMO all minions should grant LF on death).

They do give LF on death though.

I’m thinking the combo blast and poison are to deter people from meleeing the wurm.
-enemy runs up to wurm (trying to kill it so you can’t use it to port)
-you or ally drops combo field
-get a free combo, poison, and 10% life force

If the enemy attacks the wurm with a ranged attack, then their priorities aren’t quite straight and you should win the fight anyway. At the very least you can get the 10% life force from the wurm.

There really isn’t a main weapon. Rarely if ever is there a time where you’re better off auto attacking than using your abilities on your other weapon. (unless you are saving putrid mark to transfer conditions as an example).

the axe is simply a sub-par weapon. the 3 skill on it is FANTASTIC though.

Eviator.9746:

striker.3704:

I call bullkitten unless you link a video. I’ve only seen guardians do that on select dungeons.

This stinks, I know someone claimed soloing a specific boss using a minion build in explorable Arah. But I can’t find the claim. Could have been either here or in the guru forums, since at the time I was following both. I’ll keep looking.

It’s important to note that I realize that the mechanics of the fight matters, and that the mechanics have to be just right for solo’ing to be viable.

Edit: Here is a link I found with a link to screenshots. No video – http://immune-systems.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=8159

well I’ll be kitten I’m impressed he was able to do that.

healing power only really scales with mark of blood and. . .that’s it for minion masters. speccing into healing power is a waste tbh.

you would be better off toughness/power/vitality.

Eviator.9746:

Folks are soloing dungeon explorable-mode bosses with necros.

I call bullkitten unless you link a video. I’ve only seen guardians do that on select dungeons.

Cyanide.9751:

There’s just one thing i dont understand, since we necro’s only have the “f1” skill.
Why dont they just add a F2 pet attack, F3 pet follow and F4 pet passive/defensive button ?

Once a week i say to myself : “Let’s try and play with minions again, they can’t be that bad as i remember”….
It always ends in this.

Probably because that is the ranger’s mechanic.

Hieronymus.2146:

Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed my Golem, to remind myself of what I had forgotten. I had him charge various mobs and placed copper wagers on his victory or defeat.

I love you.

If you swapped curses and spite it would kitten minion masters over. In fact it would wreck power necromancers in general due to how spite works.

Also condition duration is most effective on non-damage conditions. Damage based conditions tend to be removed first so having increased duration on them will give very little benefit.

Jon has responded saying they are gonna look into the minion ai. I can’t remember the specific thread though.

the focus is great for power builds. It applies vulnerability as well as quickly recovering your life force. (death shroud heavily favors stacked power).

If you activate life transfer and leave death shroud, it heals you instead of giving you life force.

MM is tanky but the minions suffer from a few key things:
-In PvE you don’t have an elite underwater as the flesh golem dies while plague form destroys all your minions
-In dungeons minions die extremely quickly to the mass AOEs in them, and pull mobs you don’t want
-In PvP moa form kills all of your minions making you even more useless while also disabling you for 8 seconds.

A lot of the plot hero NPCs have exceptional abilities;
-rytlock uses a pistol despite being a warrior
-trahearn can summon 6 flesh golems, use a great sword, and shoot elementalist style lightning bolts.
-zojja has a permanent golem as opposed to our temp ones