Would you like to see specializations for minions, elementals etc?

as i said in my old Topic....

i Want Giant monstrosities with break Bars and Huge HPs that can run Into Zergs and Ground pound them with AOE dmg and Monster that Release AOE poisions and other conditions from their bodies while fighting..............

While it might seem a bit ironic, saying this as a necro main, but I'm dead against any kind of AI orientated specializations.

The only way that Minions, due to thier AI, can be good in an elite spec is if they brought back the bomber build and allowed us to also sacrifice health to support ect.

I didn't answer mainly because I would answer:

• Yes if it feature one and only one minion
• No if it feature more minions

At this point we absolutely don't need more AI critters and I would be like Lahmia "dead against" that. However, I believe that a specialization featuring one unique strong minion, for which we trad some power, have some interesting potential. The strong drive behind that is that such a spec wouldn't fair well in the area where the necromancer stand strong and seem to be forced into: WvW. Thus anet would have no choice but to make it stronger for other gamemode, particularly PvE.

Gw2 has trash AI. They'd be better off removed. Ranger pets would be better off isolated entirely in the soulbeast spec, and pets should have been confine to an f1 which would work like engineer kits (select one pet from a pool of many and then swap in and out of it freely; when stowed it's not on the field; when active, it has a few abilities along with 2-3 stock, non-offensive movement/position-control abilities with no cool down). The soulbeast could then only merge with the pet while it is out and the merge would be on a timer.

Pet classes either get 1 player-managed pet, or they get a cloud of bots. Since anet couldn't decide on which on they wanted to do for anybody, all gw2 pet classes are irredeemably bad.

Yes because it would force them to develop whole new minions or totally revamp the old ones into decent ones. MY ONLY ISSUE IS the elite spec should have at least 1 option to be played without the need of the minions for those who dont want them with that being said.yesyesyes

i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

right now Since they removed the Power scaling from them they prety Bad in everything....

We already have a specialization for minions. It's called Death Magic.

I wouldn't mind having new elite specializations open up new classes of AI minions. For example I think Spirits make a lot of sense for a Necromancer. But I really think that any necromancer should be able to say "I want to play MM" and see some degree of success by just taking Death Magic and the associated Minion traits and having some minions on the bar.

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

Removed Power Scaling? Minions never had that in the first place.

Heck, even in GW1, they didn't benefit from any of your damage modifications.

As for the OP, I would be in favor of it if it were focused on disposable minions that aren't supposed to live long. Having a weapon skill that spawned jagged horrors would be fun, for example. Maybe bringing new minion skills that do different things (like a bone wall minion).

Not really. The way combat in this game works any AI will always create piles of issues - you can only try to reduce them in using AI as a temporary fodder for other abilities (like Mesmer clones). The idea of spawning minions that are the most useful when they die quickly would work - the idea of them being the most useful when they stay alive and attack - not at all.

The system is too mobile and strict to allow physic-breaking things like AI running up a 90 degree slope in order to hit the target which are present for pet-oriented mechanics in World of Warcraft for example (and even then AI has problems with pathing/responsiveness there). Simply jumping up a small ledge in GW2 makes for an impassable obstacle for AI (since they can't jump after you, only shadowstep if they have the skillset) that will either force them to go around, wasting time or break aggro. And when I say AI, I mean both NPCs and Pets/Minions/Gyros etc.

I've seen people call for a minionmancer type of thing once they saw the Awakened story mission - it works for a short mini-game, but I guarantee you that after 2 hours of having to play it, especially against players, you'd dump it and call for redesigns, even if it was massively improved upon.

Controlling minions is surely one the the themes for Necromancer, but I wouldn't say it's anything class-defining. There are other areas and themes as strong that could be explored for elite specializations, providing more intuitive and fluid gameplay.

Just look at how many problems associated with AI Scrapper brought in HoT. And Renegade in PoF. Do we really want to deal with that?

How about a rework of death magic so we have minions with command abilities like that were used in the pof story mission.

I've been playing around with thoughts of a minion based elite spec where you possess the creatures you summon and you gain a full set of skills(weapons skills + heal/utility/elite) while vastly powering up the possessed creature and the possession mechanic drains life force while any damage taken is taken by the creature you're possessing, if it dies you'd get booted out of the possession state.

It's a pretty enjoyable thought tbh, I've gone through different types of creatures having troubles agreeing with myself on what would be the coolest summon to have from skeletons, demons, corrupted elementals, evil robots and monsters.

Like Rym said above there, flat out having more AI just running around would be pretty bad. It would be preferable to avoid that.

I could see something like the Awakened story mission thing working as a singular elite skill though.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

in GW2 in the beginign minions dmg scalled with the Necromancers Power... the more power you had the harder they hit....i still remember Roaming arround in soilder gear with full minions there was barely anyone that i could not outsustain in a 1v1 and kill thx to the minions...btw before i finished my build i was testing the stats many times and POWER scalled minions dmg...

THEN a rework came to the traits and minions overal.... now they have a fixed dmg that can be boosted with traits.... sadly it literally nerfed the dmg of my minions sooo hard since they don't scale with power anymore that i had to throw away the entire build.... that was the last time i actualy feelt like a real Necromancer...Hell the build was effective even in Spvp...

Since the changes Minion Masters are in a realy bad state minions are just a joke right now....and will stay that way till a rework to them not comes again or an Elite spec that focuses on Minions...

Minions, yes, but it is never ever going to happen. It's a PvPcentric game even if the PvP crowd is disillusioned. As thus a body of AI targets running around and doing -well- will never be accepted. We can have a body of AI targets going around, as long as they are useless, IE MM necros, but no one wants a useless specialization.

GW1 necro was amazingly fun. Only one type of summon if I remember correctly, and we had to have a corpse to raise a mob, which doesn't translate very well in gameplay since some maps were about mobs that did not have corpses, but in those maps that worked wooooo. I have fond memories of going around with my huge posse and trying to keep the army rolling.

City of Heroes had a great pet class called the Mastermind. Lovely. T1 was three weak NPCs, usually melee. T2 was two NPCs, usually ranged and with utiity. T3 was a single tank/bruiser. Depending on the specialization they would be a street gang, ninjas, zombies, or, my favorite, robots. The summoner did very little damage, they would be about buffing, debuffing, and trying to keep their summons alive.

It would never happen here. Just remember the furor that was mobile ranger spirits, and they only body blocked and provided buffs.

I wouldn't mind a profession that looked like Mesmer, but oriented around minions.

Profession Mechanic: No Shroud, Skills that would grant life force create minions instead.

F1 Minion bomb F2 Condition Bomb F3 Fear Bomb F4 Block.

I'd be ok with something like that. And since it wouldn't be OP in WvW or PvP (since minions root on attack and cant hit moving players), it could fix PVE. The longest time our PvE worked was Lich Form minion spam.

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

You're remembering wrong. People ran around in Soldier's gear because it was the tankiest available (only one with Toughness and Vitality), not because the Power stat did anything for minions. Healing Power really didn't do anything either, so there was no point in gearing for that, since Blood Fiend and Vampiric Master didn't scale at all (or very, very poorly) with the stat. Minions have never scaled with Power, only condition damage, condition duration, and boon duration.

Minions were effective in Soldier's gear because they ignored your own stats (and still do). Once again, the stats that minions scale with have never changed whatsoever throughout the game's history.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

Minions dmg SCALED with Power back them.... i made multiple tests.... then it maybe was a bug or something but the more power you had minions dmg drasticaly increased.....

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:i like minions as is, as no brainer damage sponge when u need it.

Hundreds of Necros ran those same tests and came to the opposite conclusion you did, myself included. Something was bad with your testing method if you were getting damage increases off of it.

Now, what was the case was that the trait to increase minion damage was in Spite, which at the time gave 200 Power and 20% condition duration at the tier needed to get that trait. It's not that the minion's stats scaled with Power, it was that to get the increased damage, you got Power as a consequence.

I bet that as soon as we get a elite pet spec, it will be nerfed into the ground because of some bug and it will be because of pvp and WVW and people crying.

Yes please. How about an elite spec that fights with little bugs all over the place and creates a lot of confusion?

Oh wait, we already got that...

@Glott.7239 said:little bugs all over the place and creates a lot of confusion?

i call them mesmers and thiefs......

@Lahmia.2193 said:While it might seem a bit ironic, saying this as a necro main, but I'm dead against any kind of AI orientated specializations.

Not only that but the Core Necro build for minions is already a highly specialized and effective build to begin with ... if it wasn't so boring, it would need a nerf.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Lahmia.2193 said:While it might seem a bit ironic, saying this as a necro main, but I'm dead against any kind of AI orientated specializations.

oh pls let it be sarcasmpls let it be sarcasmpls let it be sarcasm............