Very Needed Minion Buff

Necromancer's minions are huge part of the fantasy of its class in every game which lures people who like to have minions which they support or are supported by in fights. But in GW2, Minions are just a punching bag that don't really have much going on for them, and they feel like they are glued on to the spec rather than possible part of it. Minions stats are very bad, and in PvE they feel tanky only because their HP pool is increased by around 70% than PvP. So until you come to some elite or boss in dungeon/fractal that uses AOE spells in which your minions just stand, you don't notice their fragility and ... lack of usefulness. Below I will post few major points that aren't in any way game breaking in either PvP nor PvE, but can mean a lot to the whole specialisation and talent tree connected to them.

• 1.) Minion ReturnWe don't need to have the Ranger's panel of control. No. But just implement us a simple one button, "to me!" button, which will command all our minions to simply stop whatever they were doing, and move to the position of Necromancer, after reaching it, they return to their normal behaviour. This is very much needed in order to give us at least ANY control over them. To stop them from following running mob into a mass of monsters, to move them from high damaging AOE they are standing at or to simply reposition them to be closer so that you can heal/shield them together for example. We. Need. This.

• 2.) Minion attack speedMinions have very very bad attack speed, which combined with everything else, makes them so clunky and useless most of the time in fights where you have to move around, because their attacks will get "out of range, Obstructed, dodged" Because if something takes 3 second to make an attack, the chances that enemy will move out of range or behind something is HUGE. Which further reduce the damage and usefulness of them. We need them to feel like they are more mobile and lively than just a meat circus that moves sometimes to attack.-All minions should attack Once per Second, their damage scaled to match their current DPS

• 3.) Minion statsOh boy this is important one. Minions have some pretty crappy stats. from 7 to 13k hp, barely and VERY LOW ARMOUR. Their feel of being tanky in PvE, comes from the passive buff In PvE zones (World versus World not counted) of 71% increase health. This is very bad design, as they already don't feel like part of necro nor any build except auto condi removal tools, which is also clunky as sometimes even though its not on cooldown , their passive condi removal takes 3-4 seconds until it decides to remove a Condi placed on you to a minion.Minions at the moment benefit only from Necromancers : "Condition damage and Condition Duration" and this is only so when you are Condi build and take death magic with minions, the conditions they transfer can at least be strong as if you casted em back on enemy. Which is neat and is good design. But.. it was halfway done. What about all the other builds necro has, and all the diversity in them ? Not to mention how BLood Fiend is a TERRIBLE healing skill minion which has a Healing Per hit, which scales with ITS Healing power instead of ours. Making some support builds or Hybrid builds completely ignore it as its very very bad healing option, which combined with its attack time of Once in FOUR (4) seconds even worse. As if its obstructed and or dodged , you don't get healed of course. Active healing is medicore compared to others and it kills your pet as well. You are much better of using ANY other healing skill which will heal you 2 even 3x more on demand.
  MInions should get bonuses from Eqipment player is wearing. Mainly defensive and utility ones. With just a little "power" scaling so it has a meaning.-Power: 15% of player equipment power (if you dont have power on your armor/weapon they will get nothing, as its equipment and not your base power or might stacks you got)-Vitality: 30% of player equipment vitality.-Toughness: 50% of player equipment toughness.-Healing power: 70% of player equipment healing power.-They already have your Condi dmg/duration so that doesn't need change.
  This makes minions be a bit defined by the kind of necro you are. Power reaper? His minions hit a little harder than normal. Condi core? HIs minions dont hit as hard but have higher condi dmg from their master. Support Scourge? Theirs have some healing power and get some toughness/vitality so they are bit beefier. Minions now would get defined a bit and feel like a part of your build and itemisation, not like... something glued on to your spec like " here you got minions, bye"

• 4.) Minions interaction with Scourge and Staff usersMinions should NOT count towards the "Target limit" for spells that Necromancer casts. Meaning that when you for example use your Barrier which is AOE and can shield only 5 targets, and you are near other players, they will have priority and be shielded while your minions will not as the target limit is reached. This is badly designed and overlooked and should be changed that "Barriers and Healing YOU provide to yourself are also applied to all of your minions". This solves yet another problem.

• Manifest Sand Shade This is unrelated to minions. But this spell is having some issues in all game modes and builds because its damage is very low, so its not worth of a cast and its pulling back many Scourge builds dps and Fluidity how the spec is played due to how slow casting and low reward it is. The skill should be changed that it doesn't interfere with your other animations. LIke F2/3/4/5 don't. You press it while doing/casting something else and the shade appears after delay without interrupting your actions. Shade's damage is already super low and can be even lower that doesn't matter, but the ability to use it for what is meant to do and that is extend the range of your shroud skills shouldn't cost you loss in action as you need to stand and cast the spell which should be "Will the sand shade to rise upon a location" He wills it, doesn't cast and channel it. The damage of the "Manifest Sand Shade" would have to be a lot bigger for the skill to be crippled by casting time and animation.

-That's all from me. Feedback is welcome, more heads and opinions are better than one. I wish i could lock this from necro haters and obsolete comments that are bound to happen even tho this is mostly PVE and feel of spec change, that doesn't affect PVP in almost ANY way, but there is always some random "X Class/spec hater" that roams forums and bashes on everything that isn't his spec.

Minions need actual scaling of actual stats based off Necro's equipment. No dramatic buffs, but a power necro's Flesh Golem is supposed to hit harder than a condi necro's one, ffs. Ditto for the near-useless heal.

You can reduce it to give the player any control over the minions (even if it is just a "come back to me" button). This solves every sustain issue, because you can position your minions better. It might even lead to nerfs for minions as more control is a strong buff.

@"KrHome.1920" said:You can reduce it to give the player any control over the minions (even if it is just a "come back to me" button). This solves every sustain issue, because you can position your minions better. It might even lead to nerfs for minions as more control is a strong buff.

Not more control, its ANY control at all. Minions in PvP are near useless as pets because they melt in few hits, and their dps is less than 5% in a fight. What we need are minions with less dps than ranger one of course, but with similar durability.

I would Love a specialization for Necro where is own damage is reduced by 50/60% but minions one increased instead. Where you have pets that do damagr and you support, buff and heal them instead. But that's impossible i guess.

Minion return:I don't think it's needed, if anything the lack of such thing feed the fantasy of a dire undead creature that the necromancer unleash onto it's foe.

Minion attack speed:It sure is bad but, objectively, if it was faster it would generate issue elsewhere, notably onto the necromancer's sustain.

Minion stats:I have to say no there. Minion are as passive a mechanism as can be, giving them more "staying power" isn't a thing that ANet should do. Heck! They already give to much staying power through death magic that I'd be glad if we could to get rid off. Minion should just be expandables, No super minions please!

Minion interaction with scourge and staff user:Objectively there is already more than enough interactions between scourge, staff and minions.

Manifest sand shade:Unless you're not aware of it, F2, F3 and F4 proc manifest sand shade and thus all "shrd#1" traits. Having it slightly bothersome to put on the ground is a very little cost for it's potential.

My own opinion on minions:The necromancer's minions have way to much staying power, their active skills tend to be irrelevant (except rare case like Necrotic traversal) and aren't supported by any of the 4 traits that are more or less dedicated to minions (which is funny granted that no longer have any trait for Wells and Spectrals skills, yet we are still stuck with 4 trait that barely work unless you got minions while not having an inbuilt way to summon minions. Certainly the biggest nonsense of the necromancer's design).

Like I said, the minions should be "consumable/expendable", a design that some of their active skills try to create. Yet the weakness of those active skills and the overwhelming amount of work put into making minions passively usable make this inefficient.

For me, the minions need to all be sacrificed on active skill use and traits that involve minions should proc their effects on "active skill use" not passively (The worst is that they did that for the ranger's spirit while it was a bad choice to do so for this profession while they kept the necromancer's minion in the current way when they need this treatment). If ANet really want to keep all those passive minions traits they need to give us a way to generate minions that doesn't require us to take a major trait nor take a specific kind of utility skill.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Minion return:I don't think it's needed, if anything the lack of such thing feed the fantasy of a dire undead creature that the necromancer unleash onto it's foe.

Minion attack speed:It sure is bad but, objectively, if it was faster it would generate issue elsewhere, notably onto the necromancer's sustain.

Minion stats:I have to say no there. Minion are as passive a mechanism as can be, giving them more "staying power" isn't a thing that ANet should do. Heck! They already give to much staying power through death magic that I'd be glad if we could to get rid off. Minion should just be expandables, No super minions please!

Minion interaction with scourge and staff user:Objectively there is already more than enough interactions between scourge, staff and minions.

Manifest sand shade:Unless you're not aware of it, F2, F3 and F4 proc manifest sand shade and thus all "shrd#1" traits. Having it slightly bothersome to put on the ground is a very little cost for it's potential.

My own opinion on minions:The necromancer's minions have way to much staying power, their active skills tend to be irrelevant (except rare case like Necrotic traversal) and aren't supported by any of the 4 traits that are more or less dedicated to minions (which is funny granted that no longer have any trait for Wells and Spectrals skills, yet we are still stuck with 4 trait that barely work unless you got minions while not having an inbuilt way to summon minions. Certainly the biggest nonsense of the necromancer's design).

Like I said, the minions should be "consumable/expendable", a design that some of their active skills try to create. Yet the weakness of those active skills and the overwhelming amount of work put into making minions passively usable make this inefficient.

For me, the minions need to all be sacrificed on active skill use and traits that involve minions should proc their effects on "active skill use" not passively (The worst is that they did that for the ranger's spirit while it was a bad choice to do so for this profession while they kept the necromancer's minion in the current way when they need this treatment). If ANet really want to keep all those passive minions traits they need to give us a way to generate minions that doesn't require us to take a major trait nor take a specific kind of utility skill.

All the attack speed interactions can be solved by tweaking the numbers a bit. As there is Only One talent that benefits it and its MINISCULE. That is Vampiric Pressence. So that's a no issue.

There are several points to look at necromancer class. Yours is that you should summon weak minions that you consume for effects and resumon oftenly. But the very summoning should br passive. Which comes down to the passive minion play, you have a chance or your X and Y spells summon untargetable shade that attacks your enemy 5 times. Using Z spell on enemy detonates the minions attacking the target for G bonus effect. Which is worse way than now.

And there is the other way where neco summons strong flesh golems which are durable and strong but slow. In all games Neco is introduced and accepted as a class that can choose a path to summon strong durable Flesh Golems which aids them in fight, are strong but slow can tank and use skills to devastate enemy. Killing a necro was always a battle of dodging pets while focusing Necro. And the better player wins. Necro who kites player around minions, or enemy who kites minions to kill Necro.

What you pointed is an optional way to play the class which should be somewhere in there as exactly that "an option". Majority of playerbase who were looking for summoner class choose Necro just to get disappointed. Your way of seeing necro is your personal opinion, which should be an option respectively, but not the only way in any case. And the things which you mentioned as arguments to my post is something that a summoner player wouldn't say. So I have to consider some of your points as attempt to troll and just bash on a class you hate.

Neco Minions have 71% increased HP in PVE for a reason. But that is a very bad and lazy way from ArenaNet to make them relevant.Much better way was to let their Toughness scale from players Toughness. Same for HP and Pwr. It wasn't a problem to give them 100% condi dmg/duration scaling from player, so why should this? Why limit them to only one build? Staying power should be an option for people who build Support builds and healing power and do zero damage on their own.

Minions are used like training wheels for many new players so no scaling to stat's is fine.

However, I do want to be able to double-tap a minion skill and have it die right where it is. Bone Minions and Flesh Wurm can be dismissed but scorpion, balloon, and chicken cannot and that makes me sad.

Oh my!Necromancer notes from todayNecromancer

Minions: Fixed a bug that could cause minions to fail to be resummoned when mounting and unmounting too quickly.

@LucianDK.8615 said:Oh my!Necromancer notes from todayNecromancer

Minions: Fixed a bug that could cause minions to fail to be resummoned when mounting and unmounting too quickly.

There we go! MM is buffed!

I support Minion buffs. I love minion builds. For me...it is the a fun fantasy of mine. However, I play other builds even in PVE because it is so weak compared to other builds. :-(

Personally I like how ESO handled Necromancer minions. Instead of just being passive pets that stick around forever, they are active skills that provide damage or buffs and then die, leaving a corpse behind that can be used to dual other spells. It's actually pretty cool. If anything, I would like to see minions completely reworked to provide more active gameplay.

There should be a tree dedicated to them. Would be coul if Death Magic had talent to summon one Sand golem instead of Flesh Golem, which is stronger than all other summons, but you cannot have other summons active while he is alive. And that your Scourge shroud abilities affect area around it. And every time it attacks it would give you 2% life force and slow enemy it attacked like Flesh golem does.

@Marko Welder.3547 said:There should be a tree dedicated to them.

That would suck unless it was an elite spec tree. Anet has done a lot to remove skills and weapons being dependent on a talent tree to be effective. If you limit it like that, it limits build diversity.

1.) Minion Return

This is something I have asked for in the past, maybe not quite in the way you described but I would like a command that forces minions to break combat and return to me.Main use of this would be to pull them out of AoE and avoid instant death mechanics much like you described.But I would rather have the minions remain in a non combat stance until I actively use an offensive skill to trigger them back into attacking.

That said, most of this games PvE AOE is not even remotely strong enough to wipe out a group of minions that are fully buffed by traits and supported by their master.

2.) Minion attack speed

The problem with increasing attack speed is lifesteal, unless that is balanced along with their damage it would be too overpowered.Necro's can already gain an absurd amount of lifesteal sustain from minions, especially reapers running Rise! which can easily have around 10-11 minions active at one time and with alacrity support, maintain that number indefinitely while for short periods of time having up to 15-16 minions active at the same time..
Since Rise! also provides a stacking second form of the Protection boon as well (which can also be sustained indefinitely with alacrity) this can easily make Minion Masters extremely difficult to kill in PvE, even damage focused ones.

I don't think increasing the attack speed and balancing the damage and lifesteal around that is really worth it tbh, from my long years of experience using minions in PvE I think it's fine as it is.

@"Marko Welder.3547" said:3.) Minion statsOh boy this is important one. Minions have some pretty crappy stats. from 7 to 13k hp, barely and VERY LOW ARMOUR. Their feel of being tanky in PvE, comes from the passive buff In PvE zones (World versus World not counted) of 71% increase health. This is very bad design, as they already don't feel like part of necro nor any build except auto condi removal tools, which is also clunky as sometimes even though its not on cooldown , their passive condi removal takes 3-4 seconds until it decides to remove a Condi placed on you to a minion.

I'll not argue the current uselessness of minions in competitive game modes since I haven't used them there in many years.. Gw2 didn't have expansions or Elite Specs back when I ran minions in PvP and they were very overpowered back in those days and able to make you unfairly tanky and hard to kill.

As for the condition removal bit, keep in mind that some Necro abilities benefit from having conditions on the Necromancer.The two most notable off the top of my head are Consume Conditions and Dagger 2's Life Siphon.Both those skills grant bonus health gain when you have active conditions, Bleed specifically for Dagger 2.So having a decent delay between condition removal is beneficial to some Necro playstyles.As someone that has used Dagger for years I get good use out of the self bleed/life siphon combo when i'm soloing really strong creatures like the Lab Horror or a Legendary bounty, improving the condition removal capabilities of Minions would only help make those above mentioned skills less useful and less reliable.

Minions at the moment benefit only from Necromancers : "Condition damage and Condition Duration" and this is only so when you are Condi build and take death magic with minions, the conditions they transfer can at least be strong as if you casted em back on enemy. Which is neat and is good design. But.. it was halfway done. What about all the other builds necro has, and all the diversity in them ? Not to mention how BLood Fiend is a TERRIBLE healing skill minion which has a Healing Per hit, which scales with ITS Healing power instead of ours. Making some support builds or Hybrid builds completely ignore it as its very very bad healing option, which combined with its attack time of Once in FOUR (4) seconds even worse. As if its obstructed and or dodged , you don't get healed of course. Active healing is medicore compared to others and it kills your pet as well. You are much better of using ANY other healing skill which will heal you 2 even 3x more on demand.

This is why I keep Dagger in my PvE minion builds as Dagger 2 can easily be used as a very potent healing skill which can easily outheal the total healing per CD time of most if not all the Necro's dedicated heal skills.The Blood Fiend alone is not worth the investment but in a pure minion build it is since the goal is to have as many minions as possible feeding you as much health as possible, not to mention the extra toughness from carapace.

MInions should get bonuses from Eqipment player is wearing. Mainly defensive and utility ones. With just a little "power" scaling so it has a meaning.-Power: 15% of player equipment power (if you dont have power on your armor/weapon they will get nothing, as its equipment and not your base power or might stacks you got)-Vitality: 30% of player equipment vitality.-Toughness: 50% of player equipment toughness.-Healing power: 70% of player equipment healing power.-They already have your Condi dmg/duration so that doesn't need change.
This makes minions be a bit defined by the kind of necro you are. Power reaper? His minions hit a little harder than normal. Condi core? HIs minions dont hit as hard but have higher condi dmg from their master. Support Scourge? Theirs have some healing power and get some toughness/vitality so they are bit beefier. Minions now would get defined a bit and feel like a part of your build and itemisation, not like... something glued on to your spec like " here you got minions, bye"

I'm not against something like this although it would take some serious balancing trail and error to get right and we could end up with some major OP minion builds for a while.

Perhaps it would just be easier to add unique modifiers to the Grandmaster traits in the Death Magic line that adjust minions stats slightly.Death Nova = Power focused Minions = Improved power and precision stats, diminished vitality and toughness.Corrupter's Fervor = Condition focused minions = Improved condition damage and condition duration, diminished vitality and toughness.Unholy Sanctuary = Defensive focused minions = Improved toughness, vitality and healing power, diminished power, precision and condition damage.

It wouldn't be perfect but it would be some kind of option.

On a side note I'd also kinda like for Elite Specs to get a minion altering trait that provides them new abilities or perhaps just taking the spec gives minions a new cosmetic appearance.For example taking the Reaper spec could change your minion's making them look more demonic and evil.. kinda like Gw1 minions.While taking Scourge would have your minions look more like skeletal shades and ghost like creatures.Mechanically they'd be the same but it would be a cool little thing that would give each spec a little more personality.

• 4.) Minions interaction with Scourge and Staff usersMinions should NOT count towards the "Target limit" for spells that Necromancer casts. Meaning that when you for example use your Barrier which is AOE and can shield only 5 targets, and you are near other players, they will have priority and be shielded while your minions will not as the target limit is reached. This is badly designed and overlooked and should be changed that "Barriers and Healing YOU provide to yourself are also applied to all of your minions". This solves yet another problem.

I don't personally have this problem with Transfusion healing (I can heal both my allies and minions in most cases) but I can see why that might be an issue with Barrier.I agree, maybe it would be better to have minions gain barrier only when their master does.Perhaps this could be done with some or all boons as well to get rid of players wasting buffs on peoples minions, priority likely already does this well enough though.Still might be worth a look though it could cause some cheap gameplay Groups of Necros standing back getting boon spammed while buffed minions do all the work lolMight have to add a range limit to ensure the Necromancer is close to minions for them to gain those buffs.

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Marko Welder.3547 said:

Something in your discussion caught my eye and I wanted to present a couple of points.

1. A player can use minions without taking Death Magic, much less chosing all three traits. Making minion traits more detailed and complicated may lessen their utility in partial minion builds.
2. It is perfectly fine to populate your skill bar with a full set of pets, yet use only one or two minion traits. Sometimes you may want your minions to die (in a putrid explosion where FotM can be avoided) and other times you may want to heal and tank for them to prevent death (making Death Nova the wrong trait to take and FotM the right choice.)

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Marko Welder.3547 said:

1. A player can use minions without taking Death Magic, much less chosing all three traits. Making minion traits more detailed and complicated may lessen their utility in partial minion builds.
2. It is perfectly fine to populate your skill bar with a full set of pets, yet use only one or two minion traits. Sometimes you may want your minions to die (in a putrid explosion where FotM can be avoided) and other times you may want to heal and tank for them to prevent death (making Death Nova the wrong trait to take and FotM the right choice.)

Problem is that we are far away from thisAs Minions are too weak and meaningless to be worth protecting and taking damage for...

If they did some noticeable damage or gave some aura or smth I could see it worth. Right now? No, really no.

@"Marko Welder.3547" said:Problem is that we are far away from thisAs Minions are too weak and meaningless to be worth protecting and taking damage for...

If they did some noticeable damage or gave some aura or smth I could see it worth. Right now? No, really no.

Well Rise! does give you basically free protection while your minions are attacking but without alacrity support you cannot maintain it indefinitely.The Rise! minions also reflect some damage too (These guys absolutely wrecked the Grand Viscount over Halloween XD I could knock off 15-20% of his health every time he started throwing candycorn just with these minions lol)

Minions are not very strong in the sense of damage but they do have great use for lifestealing, protecting them and taking damage for them in this regard is definitely worth it and you can become very hard to kill as a result.It's basically a symbiotic relationship of sorts.. you protect and occasionally heal them and they keep feeding you health and occasionally taking conditions from you in return while the Rise! minions literally "protect" you as well with Dark Bond.

As far as playstyles go this is probably the closest one i've found to the kind of symbiotic relationship Necros had with minions back in Gw1.There's definitely room for improvement in other areas though.. such as sacrificing minions to heal yourself or deal damage etc which is far more messy in Gw2 than it was in Gw1.

But the biggest standpoint in your post is "Rise" from Reaper. And those minions are cool because of protection etc. But what about Core necro and Scourge necro. They also need something.
I would like talent in Scourge that says: "Your manifest Sand Shade is now Rise a Sand Golem, GOlem has improved stats (30k life , 2700toughnes, 1500 power) shroud skills affect area around your golem. You cannot summon any other minions while Golem is alive.

I do think that some of the necromancer's core weapons could have some effects tied to minions.

For example ;Dark Pact could grant all your minions superspeed for 3 seconds.Mark of Blood could grant all your minions a sizeable life-steal effect for 5 seconds.Enfeebling Blood could grant a 10 second buff to the minions in the area of effect that makes their attacks inflict bleed.Unholy feast could grant minions in the area of effect 3 seconds of quickness.

This set of new effects could be a replacement trait for Necromantic Corruption, which I find quite underwhelming in its current form.

@killfil.3472 said:I do think that some of the necromancer's core weapons could have some effects tied to minions.

For example ;Dark Pact could grant all your minions superspeed for 3 seconds.Mark of Blood could grant all your minions a sizeable life-steal effect for 5 seconds.Enfeebling Blood could grant a 10 second buff to the minions in the area of effect that makes their attacks inflict bleed.Unholy feast could grant minions in the area of effect 3 seconds of quickness.

This set of new effects could be a replacement trait for Necromantic Corruption, which I find quite underwhelming in its current form.

Lots of trait opportunities here.

How did I miss this thread?

pDPS Necro/Reaper is heavily centered around crowd control against adds. But buffing minion damage (specifically flesh golem, shadow fiend, bone fiend) would benefit against single target opponents. I highly support this idea, since I use flesh golem mainly for breaking defiance bar. For an elite pet, it should do more damage naturally. Don't understand how Ranger/Soulbeast and Mesmer/Chrono can get away with this and Necro cannot...

Going to be honest, only changes I would want to see to minions are related to the active skills. Make them more impactful, and with Bone Minions, at least make it so the one closest to your target is the one that blows up, not the one closest to you.

No. Not really. I like the dark magic caster that a necro is. Not the minions.

If anything, minion traits need to be removed, because there's literally 3 minion traits in one trait line. While fear traits are in 3 different ones?!

Also minions are extremely useless or let's say, frustrating to play with, because of their ai.

Just delete minions already

This isn't a new idea and the last thing we need is more focus on already questionably strong minion builds. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the big disparity between how a skill family performs in PVE vs. PVP/WvW. Still, since they share the same function in all game modes, they probably shouldn't be made better for competitive modes at the risk of making them ridiculously OP in PVE.

Two things I still want for minions after 8,5 years

1. Double-tap minion skills to kill those that I cannot already kill. Tack the capability onto Death Nova, or something.
2. Minion skins on the BLTP; add a little diversity, please. Maybe dye channels, flags, "clothes" of a sort, something to make them distinguishable.