Guild Wars 2

In all honesty it is some of the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard.
-All the “emotion” feels extremely fake
-Her voice is flat the vast majority of the time
-what little “emotion” there is to be heard sounds extremely forced

When I heard her talk after the ascalonian captain appeared in front of her, I sincerely hoped she was talking to the ghost until she said to keep the ghosts off her back. It makes me cringe every time I do that dungeon path and want to turn my sound off.

If you remove the blind not only does something useful need to be put in it’s place, but you also need to boost the other abilities on it. ATM it doesn’t do hardly any damage with it’s bleeds.

I can see how the attrition aspect works with each spec
(but each of them suffers from a big weakness):
-wells give you a “stand and fight” mechanic that punishes enemies for stick around
(but are pretty easy to simply walk out of due to the pulse mechanic)
-condition necromancer can send conditions placed upon him back to the enemy while maintaining conditions
(countered pretty easily by the large amounts of condition removal in PvP)
-minion master can repeatedly summon minions to draw the enemies attention or hammer them for being ignored
(AI is balls, death shroud prevents the use of minion skills, don’t have an underwater elite)
-death shroud spec’d necromancers can create a new health bar repeatedly
(the soul reaping tree DS specific boosts don’t seem to work)
-life siphoning necromancers draw from the enemies health pool
(life siphoning is incredibly small per hit and doesn’t scale in any noticeable manner with healing power)

the elite forms killing minions (NB0073) should be moved from bugs to other issues.

Karl McLain.5604:

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

I will admit that I do enjoy the fact that the blink from it doesn’t interrupt my casting of other spells.

Actually the amount of life it has is tied to your level, not your health. But I agree it dies far too quickly at lower levels, and I personally don’t feel like it does much even when it’s alive.

digiowl.9620:

Axe plus dagger combination can be quite nice. 5-6 attacks with axe, switch to dagger and you will pull of some nice damage.

outside of the maintainability of the damage increase you get pretty much the same benefit from BiP now that it grants might. And said might goes with you if you switch target, vulnerability does not.

Also, you’re giving up our best source of AOE, the staff, to carry two fairly short range single target weapons.

To be fair, might only buffs up your personal damage while vulnerability makes that target take more damage from everyone.

I wonder if lowering the Axe Training trait from grandmaster to master or maybe adept would indirectly buff the axe? That way you could get the increase damage with axe, AND the +20% damage with Close to Death. Thoughts?

I would love that personally.

The axe+focus combo does give a lot of vulnerability, however they both are really lack luster in PvE. With the two of them combined you end up having really poor damage in group fights.

I’d love it if the focus bounced around up to 5 targets and could bounce until it hit the same target 3 times. This leaves it the same in a one on one fight (5 bounces total) but increases it’s capabilities in group fights. I’m not sure how to balance the life force it gives though.

The axe 1 and 2 both need slight improvements for each.

For the auto attack they could increase the vulnerability stacks applied up to 3 per hit, and increase the damage by 10%.

For the channel they could increase the life force gained by about 1%, making it the weapon with the fastest life force gain. This gives it a good niche. (the dagger has the niche of being the self heal weapon).

The metagame is currently all about condition removal. This does negatively affect condition necromancers however that doesn’t mean something should be done to the meta game.

I’d wait until at least 3 months after most of the bugs are fixed before changing that around.

condition duration and power works out pretty well for me as the spite line boosts my non-damaging conditions duration. As a minion master who uses axe+focus and staff, the duration is great for all the weakness, cripple, and vulnerability I spread. If that tree became the way you want it OP, it would shoe-horn me into a critical based build which doesn’t doesn’t have any synergy with my minions at all.

make the bone minion rigor mortis instant cast.

Dibrom.6408:

Almost makes me wish I didn’t reroll ;_;

But it makes sense, Halloween = Necros?

I seriously hope you didn’t delete your character. with 6 slots base I doubt you had all of them full with level 80s.

I love you Jon!

But yeah, minions have a couple of aggro issues with AI.
-If you command a minion to use an ability on a target, that one minion will focus the target. However, once a fight has started their focus wanes greatly.
-melee minions seem to have some mental blocks with attacking targets, they spend a lot of time idle.
-the flesh golem goes out and attacks targets of it’s own accord.

The ranged minions seem to be fine about attacking at least.

also minor gripe: I feel like rigor mortis should be instant cast due to the reliance on the bone minion hitting as well as the fact that the cast time doesn’t make it as worth while as casting other spells.

nekro you need to get away from “the game should have the themes I want” and look at how the game portrays itself.

Death has never been particularly morbid in the guild wars universe. People can transition into and out of it with relative ease, communicate with the dead, and even convince the dead to help them. Death will never be particularly morbid in the guild wars universe.

I honestly didn’t read more than the OP post, but seriously boycotting?

I’ve been one of the more adamant posters and even I think you’re taking this way too seriously.The game works at it’s core. Boycotting just because one class doesn’t work all the way is just silly.

In all honesty what bothers me more is that the one elite we can bring underwater kills all minions, so minion masters get a double wammy of not only lacking the flesh golem but also having an elite that kills their minions.

putrid mark transfers all of your conditions off of you onto your target, so it’s very good. If you’re looking for another condition removal, the heal consume conditions is very strong. I’d recommend that over the well. (you shouldn’t need more condition removal than that).

bone minions are the only other blast finisher after putrid mark, so if you want another blast finisher, they’re OK. However they’re AI inhibits them so much you might not find them worth it. (as a base skill, they don’t need the +30% damage)

the flesh golem is strong in it’s own right.

The bone minions are one of the least worth while to bring due to how they stand next to you for ages making the explosion worthless.

as for the OP, Minions are not required to be a good necromancer. In fact, the most popular build atm is conditions.

There are a lot of different ways you can run a necromancer wells/life siphon/mark focused/minions/conditions/spectral/death shroud ect, and most don’t use minions. So don’t feel forced to use them.

I think an absolutely fantastic way to change reanimator is to change it from “whenever an enemy dies around you” to “whenever an ally or enemy dies around you”. This way if a minion dies, you get the jagged horror. Jagged horrors would not spawn due to the death of other jagged horrors, of course.

Oh also, if they’re going to keep this degen, the cooldown should seriously be removed. That or remove the degen itself.

digiowl.9620:

Either turn weakness into a fixed % damage boost, or make axe 1 stack might on us.

At least with scepter and epidemic i do not have to time it to the exact moment before i switch target if i want to carry the effect over to my next “victim”.

I hope you mean a fixed damage reduction . Also technically it already is.
50% reduction when it procs. It averages out to a 25% total damage reduction.

I could go for another 2handed weapon. Especially if it was a power/minion focused weapon.

Overkillengine.6084:

striker.3704

That would make the necromancer too much like the mesmer and really take away from the class. It’s also an easy cop out solution.

A real solution to fixing the problem is to:
1. fix AI
2. make the minion master trait actually decrease the minion active cooldown
3. undo the “transformations kill all minions” crap (at least for elites and moa form)

I’d like Necromancer minions to work properly myself, but honestly given how long it will likely take to make the right fixes……..I’ll take “working reliably” over “unique and distinct”.

They could still have an activated ability that could be fired after summons which would still distinguish them from mesmer illusions.

I honestly don’t know how they are going to fix minions dying instantly upon mode/form change…as I can see why they should die in order to prevent someone from effectively having 15 skills active instead of the 10 we are supposed to be limited to along with everyone else.

Edit: Which means that any other mode or form change will cause this as a consequence….

So either we get stuck with long recharge permanent minions that croak the moment we get Moa’d or otherwise have our skillbar replaced, and then have to wait out a long recharge.

Or we ask for a shorter recharge to bypass the random uselessness periods and give up something to compensate.

other classes who have pets and a transformation (elementalists and engineers) don’t lose their pets/turrets when they transform. For some odd reason it’s a necromancer only burden.

I’m fine not being able to use minion actives when transformed, but it really seems unfair to the necromancer that he’s the only one to lose everything when transformed.

gamefreak.5673:

Pets do not die like in GW1. Yes one good aoe will kill them but they stay up forever to it is killed or we swap it out and its not like we have a quick way to swap them so we can resummon them to be at full health besides swapping to another skill, waiting on cool down then swapping it back. It is clunky with how we unsummon the minions. Just a simple all minions passive, attack, and defend would do wonders for them. So many times in instances, wvwvw, etc that it would have made minion master builds many times better. Also remove the horror bleed for the love of anything holy or unholy.

I didn’t mean the degen, I meant they actually die. (as compared to the ranger’s pet who only goes into a downed state).

shadow fiend is probably the best at everything, but the flesh golem is the most intimidating.

I’m not quitting at this point buuuuuuuuuut:
-useful jagged horrors
-minion AI fixed
-minions no longer killed by transformation elites
-flesh golem can swim underwater
-focus buffed in some way for bigger fights
-axe damage increased
-health siphoning improved
-general bug fixes
-A legendary that matches necromancers

NecropsY.8649:

Minion masters either need a swarm of desposable minions you can explode and bomb with

5x Bone Minons
3x Bone Fiends

or 3x Worms that can be moble – get rid of the teleport and make them pop out while pushing that button rest of the time they burrow under ground and stay near the necromancer

- failing the swarm notion of all minions with current health, they need to greatly increase the health of each minon (not the dammage) and buff up the defence and add a 50% reduction to aoe dammage

having 3 minions out is fine if they all survive,

and the Blood fiend is totaly un viable it should be replaced with a whole new minon idea or removed

the blood fiend could be viable if it healed for more per hit.

The pets aren’t permanent though, they die just like GW1. We don’t even need the minion health UI since we can see them much more clearly than in GW1 (and lack any target-able skills).

I honestly like it more without the UI since minions are supposed to be the mindless horde.

barti.7685:

Ynot.8397:

No, you can’t micro because the pets don’t have the ability. Hit DS(our survivability mechanic) and you lose your minions. Go underwater and our only elites ruin the ability to use our minions. I don’t use lich, I use golem and I run a condition spec. I actually really like the golem even with all the issues. I tried to spec into giving my minions a ton of health but they still die in a heartbeat.
For the record, these are all really WvWvW and t/sPvP issues. In PVE they are alright and I don’t mind going minion build. They have a lot of fixes that need to be done. After those are fixed I might just go back to my minion build for everything, but as of right now they are kittened.

lose your minions in deathshroud o.O ?! i never ever ever experienced that. you can also heal your minions with mark of blood and life transfer btw.

what he means, is that a lot of the minions outright stop attacking when you enter DS. You also can’t use the minion actives when in DS.

That would make the necromancer too much like the mesmer and really take away from the class. It’s also an easy cop out solution.

A real solution to fixing the problem is to:
1. fix AI
2. make the minion master trait actually decrease the minion active cooldown
3.undo the “transformations kill all minions” crap (at least for elites and moa form)

There is an extremely easy way to test this.

if you can find an incredibly consistent source of flat damage, simply time how long it takes for you to be depleted of life force by the flat damage source with and without the trait. If the trait increases your life force by 30%, then it should take longer for the flat damage source to drain your DS regardless of the natural % ticks. If it takes the same amount of time, then the trait doesn’t work.

If you test it this way, you don’t need to worry about gauging bar sizes or anything like that.

hell, I’d be happy if they removed death shroud and gave us 4 skills that cost life force:
1. summon jagged horror: costs 10% life force (same cap of 5) no cooldown
2. life blast: same skill 10% life force
3.dark path: 25% life force, grants a temporary health shield on top of it’s original effect
4. Doom: AOE 2 second fear from self that costs all life force. (minimum of 50% life force required and has a 60 second cooldown)
Then a lot of the traits for DS could be changed around in a way that actually benefits other specs. As of right now DS only has a meager synergy with other specs (transfusion for MM, dark path bleed for conditions, might for power). Even the spectral skills designed to work with DS can’t be used with it, only when DS is down.

If life force was turned into a recourse and DS totally removed in place for these abilities, necromancers as a whole would be better.

Like onedoesnotsimply said, the devs would just get flamed if they posted that. As of right now most necros are upset because way back in the beta they said we were the class who needed the most love, and then proceeded to nerf us at release without fixing most of the issues from BWE 1-3.

The only really positive change since then I have felt as a minion master was them fixing the flesh golem’s charge. However it cost us jagged horrors without degen that you could get up to 5 maintained at once, and a flesh golem who didn’t drown. (to be fair he didn’t have a swimming animation, but still).

I think the video was OK. My only gripe was that the times I saw you use putrid mark you didn’t use it at a time where it gave a blast finisher combo or it gave the enemy the pile of conditions on you, which I think is more valuable than the straight damage.

One of my issues is that minion mastering is so sub par compared to other necromancer builds, and the fact that the death magic tree focuses so much on us that it causes a discrepancy with necros who prefer to run other specs.

It applies a bleed if you’re lucky enough for it to hit,
It leaves a poison cloud when it dies if you invest 30 points into death magic (just about as likely to have left it in a beneficial position as the auto attack thing),
It can be an incredibly easy target for people to rally off of,
It activates your voice acting every30 seconds.

that’s just a work around though. That doesn’t change how the elite has no synergy with minion masters or your traits.

gamefreak.5673:

I want to know how you can stand by and deal with how often pets do not attack what you want or stand there while you attack something, heck how did you never get sick of golem running off and attacking mobs for you and never even selected a target yet.

The golem pulling stuff doesn’t bother me much since I have 6 AoE spells to cycle through anyway. In general overworld PvE it doesn’t make a big difference to me.

The pets not attacking bothers me quite a bit, but since I can still complete any content put before me I have learned to deal with it.

The fact that despite me toughing out bad traits (jagged horrors), poor minion AI, and poor weapon synergy I am also denied an elite underwater breaks my camels back. In fact it boggles my mind that the flesh golem cannot swim yet the elite we are forced to take purposefully kills minions, and is the biggest issue for me as a minion master at this point.

At no point should a player be FORCED to take an elite that DESTROYS his utilities.

I’ve already done it to 80 and I’m half way on getting my necro the bifrost, it’s too late to turn back now.

This is a pretty big issue for me. As a minion master you are forced to take plague form as your elite as it is the only one currently available underwater. However this elite KILLS all of your minion utility skills you specced for causing it to actually do more harm than good.

This leaves you with 2 choices:
1. Never use your elite underwater due to how detrimental it is to you
2. Use your elite underwater at the cost of most of your damage and all of your utilities

side note: underwater death shroud also favors condition necromancers heavily as it’s focused on condition spreading.

welcome to the kitteniest class in the game, enjoy your stay.

Swadow.6213:

Not soon. In this patch Necro elites Plague and Lich Form got their descriptions changed such a way that they state changing forms will kill minions, a bug that has been reported multiple times was swept under the rug by ANet calling it a feature.

That is complete bullkitten. This alone basically means that:
1.You can no longer MM in PvP due to moa form from this day onward
2. Minion master is no longer viable underwater as they will not fix transformations killing your minions. IF YOU MINION MASTER, YOU DON’T HAVE AN ELITE UNDERWATER BASICALLY.

Minion masters are kittened beyond belief now. WHO THE kitten THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA.

I’m almost done with my necromancer until Anet fixes some of our disgusting bugs. If I happen to get items for him, woop de do.

If that was/is seriously all of the changes I would be beyond mad, and transition into sad.

@meinke
actually yeah, if something is offensive simply toss it into the word filter. It’s optional to us whether it’s on or not.

or better yet, simply create different filters for different languages.

nope, not yet.
15 character limit.

If you get axe/focus and staff I would think your best stats would be:
power/toughness/vitality (hotw gives you these stats and has quick runs)
healing power/power/toughness (dungeons don’t give this)
If you’re using axe and focus you wouldn’t have much if any condition damage, so +condition damage wouldn’t be all that useful to you.
Pumping up toughness would be very beneficial followed by power, especially considering 5% of toughness becomes power and power becomes healing power.

as for runes rune of the lich would be great as it gives you vitality, +condition duration, and the chance on being hit to summon a minion.

you definitely want sapphire jewelry as it gives you healing power, toughness and power.

if you use condition damage (scepter/dagger+staff) you want chrysalis jewelry and carrion weapons. It might also be preferable for you to get CM healing/condition damage/toughness.

I’d very much so like for the bone minions to get a different skin. A bunch of rats with human skulls tacked on aren’t that menacing.

Heck, I would even like the jagged horrors to get a different skin. Something boney like GW1.

Zaxares.5419:

4. Add a new Grandmaster Death Magic trait (“Order of Undeath”?) that doubles the number of minions summoned with each minion summoning skill. So you could have 2 Blood Fiends, 2 Bone Fiends, 4 Bone Minions, 2 Flesh Wurms/Shadow Fiends and 2 Flesh Golems following you around.
attacks.

Oh man you have no idea how much I would like that skill. The minions would need to do something like 30% less damage to balance it though.

In dungeons minions tend to fall flat due to obscene AOE. Not to mention terrible AI. In solo “over world PvE” I find minions to be acceptable, though the flesh golem’s decision to pull everything you aren’t fighting incredibly annoying.

this idea would have been psuedo implemented if they kept the old minion traits (+1 bone fiend when casting bone fiend skill, +2 bone minions, ect) but I’m not sure why they removed those.

I hope that by dodge you mean “move out of the way” because if minions got a dodge roll they would instantly become insane.